


Old Stone, New Fires

by northerntrash



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternative Universe - Ghosts, Haunted Houses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-02-22 08:11:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 50,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2500769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo was not sure what he had expected when he had agreed to supervise the restoration of Erebor House, on the lonely tidal island in the North sea, but it was not this. The winters up here are cold and harsh, and there is a strange feeling on the air, thick with the brine of the sea and secrets to which he is not privy; there is some part of the long and troubled history of the place that has not been spoken of, a shadow between the broken family gravestones and the caves beneath the cliffs, dark and dangerous.</p><p>Perhaps it is all in Bilbo’s mind, but as the nights grow longer, he starts to doubt it, and as Thorin sinks ever deeper into black and incalculable moods, he will have to find what has been lost, before it takes them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,  
> Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween. :D

The afternoon light was as grey as the rest of the day itself had been, despite the fact that it was July. It seemed that news of the summer months had not reached the Northumberland coast, a fact that became only more obvious as the taxi bearing Bilbo Baggins to the isolated fishing village crept across the winding moorland roads, taking them under even heavier clouds.

The wind, cooler as they neared the coast, seemed to ease under the closed windows, making an odd, whistling noise as it came. 

A fleck of rain hit the window as they drove, but no downpour came, as if instead the rain was waiting.

He was already beginning to regret taking on this latest project.

Bilbo Baggins had been twenty-three and fresh out of university when an old family friend had offered him a job working for their trust, and in the sixteen years that had followed he had never been given any project so extensive and lengthy that he had been requested to pack up his quiet little flat outside of London and move on site, to the far north of the country, all within the space of three weeks. Had anyone else asked it of him he would have turned them down without question, but there was something about Gandalf that made him quite impossible to refuse.

“It’ll be a tremendous adventure, Bilbo,” he commented, in his odd, off-hand way that managed to blur tranquilly and intensity at the exact same time. His eyes, grey and lined but still as bright as they had ever been, seemed to laugh at Bilbo over the rim of his coffee cup, but there was a strange kind of sadness about him that Bilbo had found himself dwelling over in the dark nights after, surrounded by packing boxes and the unhappy purrs of his cat, who had seemed to know that he was going away. Gandalf seemed to have his own reservations about this project, but once again Bilbo was not privy to them: they remained as secretive as any of Gandalf’s thoughts, trapped away behind a razor sharp mind and a disconcerting affability.

“And you need shaking up,” he continued, as Bilbo had folded his arms across his chest, knowing already that there was little point in trying to resist. What Gandalf wanted, he always got.

That was the primary reason that his trust, only funded by small grants and the occasional private donation, had continued to succeed despite the odds: it specialised in the restoration and the preservation of the country’s most historic and beautiful buildings and gardens, which otherwise would have fallen into disrepair. Rather than buying them off their owners and converting them into exclusive hotels and spas, as was the trend, the owners were instead still able to continue living in them, and they would be kept the way that they had always been: in turn, they would open them to the public, under the supervision of the Greyhame Trust, the profits from which would be used to continue to keep them in fine condition.

It was a worthwhile cause, and a more useful role for his degree specialising in architectural history than Bilbo had ever thought he would find. The trust kept a small central group of employees, and though he was not the only one with enough experience to oversee a project as extensive as this, he knew full well that there wasn’t anyone else on staff that Gandalf would trust, a fact which the old man took great pains to remind him of.

“You’re really the only one I’d want to send up there, Bilbo,” he had said, running one thumb over the knuckles of his other hand.

His skin was dry, paler now than it had been when Bilbo had first met him, and looser too; the odd discolouration had started to appear around his hands, reminding Bilbo of the slow pad of time.

There really had been no argument against that.

And though he couldn’t have truthfully said that he was _happy_ about leaving his quiet little suburb and his cozy, comfortable life, there was something thrilling about the unknown, something that had twisted in his chest as he had boarded the train that morning, Gandalf waving him off from the platform. He would be staying on the Lonely Rock for the next ten months, supervising not only the rebuilding of the house, which was already underway, but the restoration of the other buildings on the island, and its opening to the public in the March of the following year. It was a big job: the buildings were in a depressing state of disrepair, and the small village closest to it would need much preparation for the (hopefully sizeable number of) tourists that would descend on it the following summer months.

He wasn’t tasked just with that, of course: the trust was small enough that it necessitated Bilbo covering a number of roles. He’d oversee both the structural and the internal restoration, and the work being done on the gardens, as well as sorting through vast tomes of local history in order to compile guidebooks and information cards for once the island was open again. And, more than any of that, he would have to help with the family itself, who were due to move in the following spring.

He glanced down, now, at the folder in his lap, that he had taken from his bag when first getting into the taxi with the intention of reading, though he had committed most of the details to memory already.

The first Lord of Durin had been awarded his peerage in 1485; they were one of the oldest noble families left in the United Kingdom to date, though they had been lacking any of the wealth or prestige that their title suggested since before the First World War. Apparently the current Lord had run his own business since completing a spell in the armed forces, and lived in a relatively modest house somewhere outside of York, close to his widowed sister and her sons: according to the file, he’d only been to the island three or four times in his life. The oldest of the boys was only twelve, but already the heir to the peerage: Bilbo had been a little curious that the Lord, only five years older than he himself was, already seemed so certain that he would not be having any children of his own.

But this curiosity was hardly professional, and he pushed it firmly to the back of his mind as his gaze left the folder once more, and returned to the landscape outside the window.

Bilbo’s excitement was dwindling somewhat at the moors, so cold and bleak looking even in the summer. The blur of grey-brown was beautiful in its own, stark way, but nothing at all like the soft green of the gentle hills only a few minutes away from his leafy suburb, where he so often happily whiled away idle weekend days in the sunshine. Already he could feel the ache of homesickness starting, dampening his enthusiasm, and he swallowed hard, searching the skyline instead for some glimpse of blue, some indication that the sun lived still beyond those low and heavy clouds, bruised and angry looking, threatening in the odd light, dim and strangely browned, like fruit left too long on the branch.

The air felt claggy and unpleasant. He shuddered a little, and tucked his arms a little closer to his side, almost regretting the decision to pack his coat in the boxes of winter things due to be sent up to him at some point in the next few weeks, for when he had settled a little better into the town.

A few drops of rain hit the glass, and he glanced at the front of the cab; the driver caught his eye in the rear view mirror for a moment, and made a low, whistling noise between his teeth.

“Your first time up here, then?” he asked, though it did not sound much like a question.

He glanced at Bilbo’s jumper, cozy enough when curled up with a book in front of the fire, but no help against bitter, coastal winds.

Bilbo nodded.

“Just visiting?”

“Working,” he replied, finally. “Up here for the year.”

The driver looked back at the road.

“All the building work out on the Rock, then?”

Bilbo blinked.

“On the Lonely Rock? Yes, I’m with the Greyhame Trust, we’re supervising the work. Are you a local, then?”

The man shook his head.

“My ma lives in the village,” he answered, after a long, slow moment, and said no more.

“Ah,” Bilbo offered, breaking the awkward silence. After another moment, he tried again. “What do the locals think of the work, then? It’ll bring a lot of tourists here, after all. Good for business.”

That wasn’t just his own opinion, either: time after time the same thing happened – isolated communities suddenly getting a burst of new visitors from the opening of one of their estates, an often-much needed boost to their otherwise stilted economies. But the driver made a low noise of amusement, and would not meet Bilbo’s eye; he seemed unimpressed with the argument, with this slight and ill-equipped man from the south, and Bilbo felt his shoulders slumping at the lack of enthusiasm.

“I’m sure you’ll hear all about it soon enough,” the driver muttered, and this time Bilbo did not try to break the silence between them.

That had certainly killed off any lingering positivity for the day, but still that twinge in his chest remained, though perhaps it should be better labelled anxiety than excitement, if he was going to be entirely honest with himself. He regretted for a moment not having brought his cat with him, a grumpy but reliable source of comfort, but he had been packed up to stay with relatives for the next year: if Bilbo didn’t like the rain and the cold then Smeagol liked it even less, and he had felt a little guilty at the idea of dragging the poor creature out to some windswept sea-side town where he would no doubt spend the year huddled under a radiator, refusing to outside lest he be hit by some spray from the sea.

And speaking of the sea, there it was; a grey line growing closer every moment, and Bilbo suddenly thought he could smell it, the heavy brine of it, though the windows were up and he hadn’t just a second before. None the less the taste of it lingered in his mouth, clammy and unpleasant, and he swallowed compulsively as the road joined with the coastal one, skirting high cliff faces, the screech of gulls wheeling high overhead breaking the still-awkward silence between Bilbo and the driver.

It was raining, far out to sea, though it wasn’t here: Bilbo watched the distant curtain of rain idly, the ebb and flow of it somewhat hypnotic, and much less distressing than it would have been if it had been closer to the shore.

They would not be far off, now; Bilbo checked his watch compulsively, before patting his pockets to make sure, once again, that he had not left anything on the train.

 The Lonely Rock was an odd place, though not entirely unusual. The island was tidal, accessible by foot only at low tide. There had once been a causeway built across, centuries before, that meant a determined visitor could arrive for longer in the day, though apparently it had still been submerged during the few hours in which the tide was at its highest. It had not entirely been rebuilt, yet, though they had re-laid the first layer of it so that the builder’s vehicles could get across. Since then, though, they had been left on the island, and any other trip to the island necessitated waiting for low tide, or getting an obliging local to take you across in their boat. 

He reached for the map of the island, sticking out of his bag, but before he could they rounded the headland and the view distracted him: there, suddenly, was the Lonely Rock, jutting up from the sea like some great old monolith, imposing and old. It seemed to glare at him as he stared at it for a long moment, with a sense of entitlement and a long, weary wisdom, as if it had seen the passage of time and knew full well the weight of it.

It was an impressive site, even with the ugly jar of the scaffolding that stood firm guard around the main buildings: surrounded on all sides by the dark and angry waters of the North Sea, the steep cliff faces off the southern side seemed to bleed into the water, the same colour and shadowed where deep fissures had been worn away.

Bilbo had seen pictures, of course, but it was nothing compared to the real thing.

No wonder Gandalf had been so adamant that they were to get involved with it.

He swallowed, reflexively, running the facts through his head in an attempt to still the unpleasant fluttering in his chest. 

It had been the seat of the Durin family since the 1750, when the eighth Lord had bought the land: before then they had lived in Khazad House, in the North West, but the place had been burnt to the ground, killing the seventh Lord, though his son, Thrain I, had thankfully escaped: arson was suspected, though never proved, and history had rather blurred the somewhat shadowy involvement of the Lord and his son with the Jacobite rebellions.

Bilbo had been a little surprised to discover that they were, as figures, the subject of much speculation and study, a popular topic of many an article from eminent historians who worked with the period. Some seemed convinced that they had been a part of the rebellion, and that Khazad House had been targeted in response, but others argued that the they had actually been an informant on behalf of the monarchy, and it had been Jacobites themselves who had struck the match, in retaliation for the betrayal.

Either way, it proved to be just another area of the long history of the Durin family that was ambiguous, and a little tragic.

Erebor House, which the eighth Lord had built on the rock had been an austere and cold place, and alongside it he had built a modest chapel for the family, with an attached house for the resident vicar. They were the oldest buildings on the island, and though the chapel had changed little over the years, it was still the most complete of the buildings, having avoided the various mishaps that had continued to plague the family. Bilbo had seen pictures of the chapel, which had already been repaired under the supervision of a local historian, apparently an old family friend, before the final contracts between the Durins and the Greyhame Trust had been completed, something which had annoyed Gandalf to no end. The roof had needed replacing, one wall required some structural support, and water damage from years of being at the seas mercy had needed attention: otherwise it was quite sound, and now awaited internal renovation.

Alongside the house and the chapel, the Lord had built a rather extravagant conservatory, apparently as a gift to his young wife. His letters to her had been preserved, uncovered by her family and the work of a tireless historian who studied the Durin line, and it was quite clear that he had loved her ardently, though her own replies had unfortunately been lost. Separated from the house by a hundred feet or so, it had been intended as a place for the young girl to sit and watch the sea behind the safety and security of great window panes, which had been long broken.

It would once have been a hard but beautiful place to live, impressive from the shore and even more so from the island itself, the symbol of the strength and wealth of a great family whose lineage dated back to the fifth century.

Now Erebor House sat, crumbling but no less intimidating.

The great windows of its south-facing halls seemed to stare belligerently at Bilbo, as if asking what he was doing here.

Honestly, he wasn’t entirely sure himself.

He glanced down, for just a moment, at the file in his lap, before staring back out the window again.

Across the sea, a beam of sunlight broke through for just a moment, thin and wavering; under its touch the sea seemed bluer, gentler, and it lit the side of the island. Once the gardens had been lush and extravagant, the walls tall and unparalleled, and for a moment Bilbo could almost see the beauty that must have been there once: a solitary and blunt beauty, but undeniable none the less.

Then the clouds closed, the sunlight went, and everything looked grey again.

It had been several hours since high tide, but the sea still lapped at the jutting rocks that surrounded the island, cutting it off from the mainland, and that anxiety in his chest made itself known again as he remembered that he would not simply be able to get into his car and leave whenever he liked: the caretaker of the island apparently brought across the builders once a day, and returned for them in the late afternoon, when the tide was highest. It was only possible to walk across around noon, and at midnight: should he miss that boat, he might be stuck on the island for a rather chilly and uncomfortable night.

 _You're being ridiculous, Bilbo,_ he told himself, in that firm voice that his mother had once used to lecture him. _They aren’t just going to leave you on the island, and even if they did, you can survive one bloody night outside._

But it did not stop him from taking a mental note to have the team start working on rebuilding the causeway proper as soon as possible, when he started work tomorrow. It would have to be done eventually, after all.

Thinking of the boats, he craned his neck slightly to see if he could spot any moored around the small bay of the island. The reports that the representative of the Durin family had not mentioned any of the locals getting involved in helping with the building work, but then, that kind of small, unofficial aid often went unaccounted in official documentation. Perhaps an enterprising shop was already making a tidy profit, sending fresh lunches over every day - it would certain be a positive report to send back to Gandalf, that the town was adjusting to the idea of the changing island.

He frowned as he leant a little closer as something caught his eye, his breath misting the glass.

Was that a boat? Or just a shadow in the rocks?

Seaweed, perhaps, caught up by the press of the water.

Dark rock, just under the surface.

That must be it.

_Was that… ?_

For a moment Bilbo was certain that he saw it move, more than just from the rock of the waves: the motion seemed oddly jolting, deliberate, more like a man turning to stare at something in the distance. Were it not entirely suicidal, he might have thought that it was someone climbing down the rocks, but who would, in this weather? Besides, there was no one on the island save the building team, and they wore bright jackets that would have shown up even on this miserable day.

He breathed out a low, odd noise.

The white of the spray seemed to blur the shadow for a moment, and then it was moving again, away from the open sea and into something that was definitely more than a shadow against the cliff face: one of the great fissures, no doubt, perhaps even one of the caves. They had been in the reports, of course, the narrow, slippery caves that seemed to worm their way through the bedrock of the island, no doubt worn down by years of patient encouragement by the sea.

Bilbo continued to stare, his eyebrows creasing as he strained to focus on the shape, so indistinct and impossible.

The road twisted, and he was forced to crane even further –

And then with a loud, wet slap something hit the glass, right in front of his face, and he jumped, his heart suddenly in his throat, his blood pumping with an immediate and unexplainable fear; the scrap of rubbish blew off quickly, and by the time he looked back, the shadow was gone.

If it had ever been there to begin with.

 _Probably just a trick of the light,_ he thought to himself. _Nothing more._

No one would be stupid enough to try and climb over those rocks in this weather.

But none the less the disquiet in his chest would not ease, and he hunched back into his seat as they began their steady descent into the village by the shore.

 

* * *

 

The old clock on the wall ticked a slow, unhappy rhythm: Bilbo sat in a hard, uncomfortable chair and tried not to fidget as the white-haired man opposite beamed at him in a way that reminded him uncomfortably of Gandalf; a third man perched on a high stool across the room, a furred hat tucked down over his ears and his eyes on the ceiling as he smiled in amusement underneath his moustache.

Bilbo still hadn’t quite caught onto the joke.

From the open doorway to the kitchen came the low scream of the kettle, and then the comforting sound of water being poured.

Balin, currently the spokesperson for the Durin family, had met him at the caretaker’s house, a sour and frowning man named Bard who had looked the both of them up and down with a look of such unhappiness that Bilbo had almost had to take a physical step backwards, away from the doorway and the house and perhaps even this whole damn village, depressing and subdued as it was, though oddly familiar at the same time, if just for the way that the curtains had twitched as the taxi had pulled up on the street, as if ready to assess this newcomer to their quiet, grey world.

It had been exactly what he had expected, this grim little place, full of narrow streets and the slick press of the sea air, the screech of gulls loud and disconsolate overhead. The locals seemed to keep themselves to themselves, those that were not sat down on the dock smoking tight roll-ups presumably out at sea or huddled in their houses: despite the summer month, there were no children playing in the street, no chatter of housewives or any of the pleasant sounds you might expect from a late summer afternoon.

Bard didn’t say anything as he carried through a tray of cups, the china service old and worn but fine; they looked odd in his large, callused hands as he passed them out to the visitors, keeping the last, chipped one for himself.

He took a long, slow sip as he watched them carefully, wearily.

“Well,” Balin said, cheerily, though the slight frown that hovered around his eyebrows suggested that he might not be quite as at ease as his tone implied. “Thank you all for agreeing to meet today. And a particular welcome to Mr Baggins, whose arrival we have all been greatly anticipating! Perhaps Bofur can start by filling us in on the progress of the building work?”

Bofur made a clicking noise with his tongue and nodded, the brim of his hat falling forwards over his eyes for just a moment.

He’d been introduced to Bilbo as the ‘chap in charge of the rabble over there on the Rock’ – Bofur’s words, not Balin’s - and from what Bilbo had been able to grasp, he was the coordinator of the various building teams and freelancers working out there at once. He seemed like the ideal man for the job, too – his wide smile managed to ease a little of even Bilbo’s discomfort with the afternoon, and as he proceeded to explain what had been done it became obvious that he knew both his team and his work very well. 

Balin smiled again as Bofur came to a close, and turned instead to Bilbo.

"And what do you think, Mr Baggins?" 

Bilbo cleared his throat.

“It's Bilbo, please," he said, not for the first time. "And we’ve been very happy with the reports you've sent over, but I’m sure that Gandalf has already told you that. There isn’t much more I can say until I can get over to the island tomorrow, of course, and see it all for myself.”

Balin nodded, and his gaze flickered to Bard, a brooding and uncomfortable presence in the parlour.

"Well, we've set you up with a nice apartment here," he told Bilbo, his fingers forking in his lap. "One of the old cottages down by the shore, converted quite recently - I do hope it will do well for you. Bard has been kind enough to buy in a few provisions for you until the rest of your things arrive, so you don't have to dash off immediately to buy food - you did bring a car with you, I suppose?"

Bilbo shook his head.

"Gandalf will be driving up with it in a few weeks," he replied. "The engine broke down at the last minute."

Bard made a low noise that could have been amusement, but could have equally been something entirely different. 

Bofur grinned.

"So you're stuck in the town until then?"

Bilbo nodded, and tried not to let the twisting discomfort rise again; the thought of being trapped in this grim, miserable little place, shadowed by a brooding island, surrounded by townspeople who quite clearly didn't want him here did not exactly comfort him. 

Balin seemed to sense his hesitation, and glanced over at Bard, his smile becoming a little forced now.

“You’ve got lovely children, I must say,” he nodded at a framed photograph, hung above the empty fireplace, of two girls and a boy, the oldest of which might only have been about fourteen. There was an air of Bard’s strong jaw and dark eyes about the son already, but his daughters had a fairer look about them, pale and slender. “I’m sure your wife is, too.”

Bard took another long sip, and cast an eye down to his ring, and wide wedding band that glinted dimly in the light.

“Aye, she was,” he said, quietly.

Bofur bit his lip; Balin seemed entirely lost for words.

They left, soon after that, and Bilbo was most unhappy to find that the rain he had watched across the sea had finally arrived to the shore, drenching them all to the bone; by the time he reached his temporary accommodation he was cold, miserable, and exhausted, but still Balin and Bofur shook his hand with cheery smiles before disappearing again into the grey sheets of rain, leaving him to struggle his way into the damp, quiet little apartment and collapse against the bed.

Despite that, he found that he lay awake for hours, listening to the disconcerting noise of the sea outside, a strange hush more like a whisper, trying to tell him some secret that lay just out of his reach, bloated with a peculiar sense of potential.

His dreams, when they came, were quiet, and full of shadows.

 

* * *

 

The sea has many voices,  
     Many gods and many voices.  
The salt is on the briar rose,  
     The fog is in the fir trees.

 


	2. Chapter 2

  _Some time later_

“What do you think of it all?” Ori asked, excitedly, as the too-long sleeves of his raincoat flapped about it hands. “Isn’t it marvellous?”

Bilbo smiled at the young historian, a fond and gentle smile. When his correspondence with the historical supervisor had begun, he had rather imagined him to be some silver-haired gentleman in brogues and tweed, and had been a little amused when first faced with this young man, eager and excited at the prospect of his first real, professional role. He was apparently distantly related to the family, and both of his brothers were also involved with the rebirth of Erebor House, due to arrive the following week to begin work on the electrics (long overdue) and the interior restoration, and though Ori had no doubt been given the role as a family favour, he had already proved himself as an excellent and astute historian, spending long hours pouring over designs with the architect to ensure that the rebuild was kept as period-accurate as possible.

Bilbo might have felt a little uncomfortable, otherwise: the Durin’s had hired him without quite understanding that it would have been stepping on the toes of the supervisor from the Greyhame Trust, but luckily they found themselves in great agreement on a number of things: Ori had apparently even used some of Bilbo’s published articles during his thesis, and was brimming with praise for him. And in the case of the sprawling Erebor House, so much more ruined than any other than Bilbo had worked on, two heads were certainly proving to be better than one.

“It is certainly very grand,” Bilbo agreed. “Though I’m sure it’ll look a little better when the inside is done, as well.”

Ori nodded enthusiastically.

“You’ll _love_ Dori,” he replied, his thumbs hooking into holes worn in the cuffs of the jumper he wore under his coat. “He’s an old fusspot but nobody knows more about period furniture than he does! His home looks more like an antiques roadshow than a house!”

Bilbo laughed, his own hands firmly in his pockets against the damp wind that had rolled in from the sea that morning.

Despite his initial misgivings, July and August had passed by with little excitement: dull rain continued to make its presence known, but not enough to really delay the work on the island, which had progressed with surprising speed. Bofur’s team had completed repairing the old servant’s cottages down by the bay by the end of July, which they cheerfully moved into, so they could start their days earlier: after that it became just Bilbo and the occasional contractor that Bard ferried across in the morning, and though his dour temperament did not improve any, he did talk a little more now the company was smaller, occasionally sharing with Bilbo a titbit of local lore or some old piece of gossip that he took care to jot down.

By mid-August the main house was structurally sound and ready for interior work to begin, just in time for autumn: the great house looked all the more impressive now the scaffolding had been pulled down from it, restored stone akroteria staring out across the sea as if searching for some distant shore.

“And I’m sure the family will love it too,” he said, smiling up at one of the grimacing figures that leaned down over the corner of the roof. “When they move here, in the spring.”

Ori frowned a little at that, but before he could say anything more, he was interrupted by the sound of Bofur calling them, from around the side of the house. He left Ori to his investigations of the restored sculpture and went to find him, grinning to himself as he saw that Bofur’s hat was drooping rather miserably in the damp air.

“Bifur wants a word,” Bofur said, cheerful despite the weather. “Though by word, I mean sign, so I’ll be going with ye, if its all the same.”

Bifur was a cousin of Bofur, and also of Bombur, the architect, and had suffered some injury whilst in the military: he was sprightly and able, but a great scar dissected his forehead, and his words were often stuttered and slow, or else slurred with great haste, as if trying to escape his mouth before they were fully formed. Apparently shrapnel had embedded itself in his head whilst on the field, and his speech had been badly affected: he’d come back to England and had resolutely learnt sign language instead, to better communicate, but Bofur or Bombur often had to step in to translate for him with people who had never learnt.

He was the chief landscaper on the project, as green-fingered as Bilbo’s own mother had been but a great deal stronger, so not only was he able to coax plants to grow in even the most inhospitable of climates, he could also deal quite well with the laborious task of re-digging  beds, laying new walls, and structuring the great, stone terraces that made up the gardens.

It was to one of these that Bofur lead Bilbo now, down a winding stone path that he was almost certain would become lethally slippery during the winter months.

The island itself was essentially crescent shaped, the inwards curve of its small bay on its western side facing the shore, and it rose in a steady slope to the top, where the House loomed: great, blank cliffs faced east across the sea. The north and south sides ranged from high cliffs at their eastern sides to low, sprawling rocks at their west, a steady incline upwards along cliff faces scarred with open fissures and the dark, gaping mouths of small caves.

But the terraces themselves were more than simple, half-circular levels. Whether by natural occurrence or the hand of man the paths that ran across them wound past great boulders, or jutting teeth of rock that loomed so impressively overhead that the shadows they threw were dark enough to render a visitor with the feeling that they were passing through a tunnel. Some trees had survived the lengthy abandonment of the island, great twisting things bent into the shelter of these rocks and into the overhanging walls of the terraces above them, hiding from the bitter wind from the sea, reaching ever upwards for a sun that rarely showed its face. They were warped and stunted, their bark dark and damp to the touch, and with the looming rock and the slick moss that grew across every stone, they had a strange, fey-like feeling about them, as if you were entering some forbidden place not meant for the tread of mortal men.

This feeling was exacerbated by the peculiar decoration of the place: here and there one would come across a crumbling, dried up fountain, carved in peculiar, angular designs, or else a statue, their faces long worn away by the sea air, leaving just unfriendly, blank places where their eyes had once been.

None the less, they still seemed to stare, or at least they did to Bilbo.

Bifur had done an excellent job in clearing the beds of the debris of over a century of decay and decline: even when the Lord Durin’s father and grandfather had lived here, it seemed they had done little to the gardens. Now most of the beds lay with fresh, dark soil, recently turned as he had begun to lay the bulbs for spring growth, or else already boasting the dark leaves of strong plants that would weather the coming winter. Though it was only September, the leaves on the trees were already beginning to acquire a strange and fetid air about them, waiting for their chance to fall; the evergreen pines seemed to shelter odd shadows in their depths, as if full of secrets.

Next winter, after the tourist season was over, Bilbo might send the family rows of outdoors Christmas lights to drape over them, to brighten up the place, but he rather thought it might be jumping the gun to do so this year.

Bofur lead him carefully towards his cousin, keeping up a steady flow of chatter that seemed almost weak and faltering in this strange place, for all that it was normally loud and close to bawdy. It seemed that even he was feeling the effect of the garden: he drew a little closer to Bilbo, and pulled his hat a little more firmly down across his brow.

“Don’t like this place all that much,” he admitted, “Though don’t tell Bifur that, he’s worked so hard on it. But it doesn’t quite feel natural, does it?”

Bilbo nodded, absent-mindedly, as Bofur’s cousin came into view, his heavy coat grimy with muck and a frown on his face. He heard them approach, and turned to them, firing off a rapid series of hand-signs to Bofur as they drew level with him.

Bofur nodded, his mouth moving now and again as he followed the motions; after a long minute he turned back to Bilbo.

“He was clearing some stone that had fallen from the terrace above and found something that wasn’t on any of the maps of the gardens – he figures that you’d want to see it, he isn’t sure what to do with it.”

There was a frown hovering around his face, as if there were more to this than he was letting on, but he just shrugged, and took off after his cousin, who had already turned and was leading them closer to the wall of the terrace above.

Bilbo followed, perhaps a little concerned, but before he could properly formulate a thought on the matter he was faced with the wall, much closer than it had appeared. The earth underneath it bore the signs of having been covered for some time, pale and anaemic looking, but there in the wall there was what looked to be a small entranceway, naturally made but perhaps carved a little wider.

Bifur motioned him forwards: a little cautiously Bilbo slipped through; even at his not-exactly-impressive height he had to duck, and from behind him came a muffled curse as Bofur hit his head against the rock.

The passageway curved, longer than it had looked from the outside; the walls were damp to the touch, almost slimy from old moss at places, and he reflexively tucked his arms against his side to avoid touching them more than he had to. From behind him, Bifur switched on a torch, the bright halogen beam casting deep and eerie shadows around him; his own seemed distorted against the rough stone walls, stretching in front of him as if leading him further in.

“How much further- oh.”

It ended quite suddenly, around another twist in the passage, in quite the most incredible grotto that Bilbo had ever seen. A popular feature in the gardens of the aristocracy, this was quite clearly a naturally occurring one: a small pool reflected the light from Bifur’s torch back, the water a clear and almost uncomfortable shade of blue that almost appeared unnatural in the light. The walls were wet, and lined with shells in odd, swirling patterns that made their meandering way across the ceiling, as well: Bilbo’s eyes followed shapes beyond his comprehension around the room and he swallowed, reflexively.

“Bloody hell,” came Bofur’s voice from behind him, and Bilbo found himself nodding in agreement.

There was the muffled noise of fabric from behind him, and a moment later Bofur spoke again, his voice oddly uncertain.

“He wants to know if you want it blocking up or not?”

There was something deeply unsettling about the place; from somewhere unseen came the slow drip of water, and the air in here was far cooler than it was outside. A low stone bench was tucked in against the wall, the mouldering remains of a cushion still just apparent, though Bilbo rather suspected that it would fall apart if anyone tried to touch it; if anything, the taste of the sea was even stronger in here, heady and unpleasant, and for a moment he had to lean against the wall to dispel the dizzying disquiet of this lonely, abandoned place.

It was very easy to imagine this being the favourite place of someone, some pretty wife or young son perhaps, a fanciful daughter or one of the Lords in need of solitude, but it only brought to mind that they were long dead, their secret hiding place blocked off by time and the slow decline of the wall above it.

Was this grotto even structurally secure? The thought of that sent a shiver of fear down his spine at the idea of being trapped here, with the almost tangible presence of the dead and the taste of the sea; the shells were sharp against his arm even through his jumper, and he had to take a long, slow breath to get himself back under control.

“We can’t block it up,” he found himself saying, though more than anything he wished they could. “We need to get someone in here to make sure that it is structurally sound, and then clean it up: it’ll be great for the visitors. We’ll see if we can find anything out about it, any story to make it more mysterious: they’ll love it.”

His words felt hollow even to himself; Bifur made a low noise of protest, but nodded none the less.

“Can we get out of here?” Bofur asked, his voice a little weak. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

Bilbo nodded, as eager to get out as his friend was, but despite himself, the thought of that grotto lingered with him for days to come.

* * *

 

Though the work on the exterior of the house had been completed, there was one thing that Bilbo remained curious about: the west wing of the house, which had once housed many of the guest rooms, had not been restored at all. Admittedly, it had been by far the most damaged section of the house, having been razed almost entirely to the ground by a great fire that had raged unexplained some twenty-five years previously, but that seemed no reason not to restore it: all it said on the notes that Gandalf had sent up to him was that it would be left in its current state by request of the owner.

Admittedly, it did make for an interesting contrast, and no doubt visitors to the island would be intrigued by the blackened stone and crumbling walls, by the great scorch marks that had spread up the still-standing wall that had connected it to the main house like great, sprawling fingers, searching for a way to the rest of the house. The old doors  had been blocked up now, but no new windows had been put in: Bilbo couldn’t help but find that side of the house a little too dark for his own tastes whenever he walked around it, glum and a little unfriendly.

But tourism didn’t seem like enough of a reason for this specific request, and it pulled at his mind for some days before he posed the question to Bard, as they were sailing across to the island one morning. That day had dawned uncharacteristically dry: though the air could hardly have been called warm, it was certainly not cold, either, and the sky was blue and empty above them.

Bard gave him a deeply suspicious look, for a long, slow moment, before his shoulders sagged, and his gaze returned to the sea.

“I suppose you wouldn’t know, not being from around here,” he said, in his low, sombre voice. “I was barely twenty when it happened, too.”

He was quiet for a moment, and Bilbo was just beginning to think he might have to prompt him to continue when he did, his voice cutting through the screeching shriek of the gulls wheeling overhead.

“The current Lord-” and Bard near spat the word, as if it left some foul taste in his mouth. “His father and grandfather were living on the Rock at the time, and a stranger pair you wouldn’t have met. Thrain used to come to the village sometimes, for food and to send mail and the like, but he was very quiet, apart from when he muttered to himself. And the old fellow – Thror – he was bedridden. Wouldn’t leave the island, apparently, to go to hospital, though he wasn’t born here – didn’t move up here until the seventies, apparently. Used to say that the Rock had been calling him for as long as he could remember.”

Bard rubbed at his face, looking more tired than ever before.

“The fire started, and my father was the only one close enough to get there in time – he was out fishing in the bay.”

There was a shadow of pain across Bard’s face, then, some grey and quiet grief that still had not loosened its hold around his heart making itself known; his voice dropped a little, becoming quieter and somehow younger.

“I remember standing on the sand and watching the smoke, and the lick of the flames, and feeling so afraid that he wouldn’t come back.”

For a moment, despite the lines that the years had worn across his handsome face, he looked for all the world like a boy, lost and waiting for his father to come back, afraid and all alone. Then he frowned, and the illusion was shattered, and he was just Bard again, as stalwart and distant as the lonely faces of the cliffs behind them.

“Well, he did, and he got Thrain out in time, though he didn’t live much longer than a year after that – the smoke got in his lungs, and he wasn’t in the best of health to begin with, living in a place three fifths a ruin already, no proper heating but the fires and the damp setting in. But Thror… well. He didn’t.”

He ran a hand through his hair, and now the mystery of the wing made perfect sense to Bilbo: who would want to rebuild rooms in which your Grandfather had died, screaming his last to the empty ceilings and mouldering wall hangings?

“I think the Lord blamed my father, for not getting there in time,” Bard continued, and then a wry smile flickered across his face for just a moment, “and I think my father blamed himself, too. But…”

He trailed off, and then his gaze was on Bilbo again, open and honest, a frown pulling at his eyebrows and his mouth downturned, though he worried at his lip for a moment with his teeth as if trying to make some decision.

“It’s a strange thing, Bilbo, and I’d thank you not to include it in that book of yours. My father told me this years later, when age was creeping up on him and his mind wasn’t as sharp as it had been, and I warrant I haven’t passed it on to anyone else before now, not even my wife before she passed away, because she was a gentle soul. But he told me that when he dragged Thrain out of there, the old man was shrieking something terrible about maps, in the library, about caves and a necklace and a curse, and a woman named Cora.”

Bilbo swallowed, despite himself; the sea air felt heavy on his tongue, and for a moment he longed for the sweet smell of the herbs in flower beds, the taste of rosemary and thyme in slow, quiet mornings sat outside with a cigarette and coffee.

“His wife, perhaps?”

Bard shook his head.

“Never met the woman, but that wasn’t her name – nor his daughter’s or mother’s, for that matter. My father told the police later that he didn’t get back to the old man before the fire forced him to turn around, but he said to me that that wasn’t quite right, that he’d lied because he was ashamed. He did make it to the old man’s bedroom, and he found him there, sat upright and quite lucid. But Thror had refused to go with him: he told my father that she’d been more than lenient with him, but he’d failed her.”

A particularly strong wave rocked the boat, and Bilbo grasped the side, steadying himself.

“She?”

Bard shrugged, his expression betraying the truth of his words: it was a strange story, but he was being honest. He knew no more about the matter than Bilbo himself did.

“My father didn’t know. But what he did know was that Thror was smiling as the flames began to eat his sheets, and that he didn’t seem at all afraid, and before my father could take him from the bed himself a great shadow seemed to spread across the wall, dark and angry, and it forced him back, to the doorway.”

Bilbo’s forehead wrinkled into a frown, then, for now the story had passed beyond the believable.

“A shadow?”

The wry twist of Bard’s mouth implied that he too didn’t quite believe it.

“I know. But a shadow was what he swore he saw, the last thing he saw as he turned away and ran; that, and Thror lifting his arms to it, as if embracing it. My mother, rest her soul, thought he’d inhaled too much smoke running in and out of the place, and was seeing things.”

Bilbo nodded, then; he’d heard of such things, hallucinations caused by smoke inhalation in moments of great panic, prompted no doubt by the peculiarity of the island and the caution with which the locals regarded it.

The boat hit the dock quite suddenly and unexpectedly, and like always, Bard did not try to tether it, as if unwilling to tie himself for a moment longer to the shore. He simply stood, steady on legs well used to the swell of the sea, and held onto to the ladder, keeping the boat as steady as he could as Bilbo climbed up onto the docks.

“But smoke or not, this is a strange island, Mr Baggins. Death and despair have lain their heads across these rocks on more than one occasion, and I warrant will do again, in time.”

Bilbo reached the top, and turned back to him, frowning, but Bard was not looking at him: instead his eyes were fixed on the dark mass of Erebor House, huddled against the rock like some old, weary tree clinging desperately to crumbling cliffs.

“Keep your feet, Mr Baggins, and keep yourself safe.”

With those final, ominous words, Bard kicked the boat from the dock, and turned his back to Bilbo, facing once again towards the safety of the coast.

Bilbo shrugged his jumper a little closer about himself, and stared after him for a moment, before his eye was drawn, once more, to the looming house at the top of the hill.

 

* * *

 

It was the end of the first week of September when Balin returned to the island, bringing with him Gandalf, who was coming to check up on how the work was progressing. The pair were led around the island by both Bilbo and Bofur, and made approving noises at every turn, particularly at the discovery of the grotto, though both of them seemed oddly puzzled after they left it (neither Bilbo or Bofur went in after them, lingering outside and shooting each other sheepish smiles of acknowledged discomfort).

The weather had remained relatively clement throughout the rest of August and early September, to the satisfaction of both Bilbo and the building team, who were now ahead of schedule – for the first time in Bilbo’s history of supervising such projects. Perhaps there really was something to say for keeping work on the family – in just a few short weeks Nori had single-handedly completed the wiring within the house, and now the plumbing was in place, too. Bofur had promised him that by the end of the following week, the plastering would be complete and it would be ready for appliances, and the interior restoration could begin fully.

It was good news, indeed: Bilbo had feared delays, for if the house had not been secure and watertight by the end of September, then they would have struggled to preserve it over the long, cold winter. Instead, the team would shift their energies to re-applying wooden panelling and floorboards, sourced from local suppliers, and the stone flags of the kitchen and old sculleries, as well as working on the interior of the church.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the old servants buildings down by the bay (which Bilbo had earmarked as gift shops, a small museum, and a house for the in-site gardener and security guards) had been completed too, and though were not particularly comfortable, were certainly liveable – it was unsurprising, Bofur had told him cheerfully, as it was rather inevitable when you left a group of handy-men and builders in partially restored houses for a season without any form of entertainment or local pubs.

When hearing this information, Balin had smiled, and brought up the first of two unwelcome pieces of news.

“Whilst you’re here, Mr Baggins,” he said, quite cheerfully, “We thought that we’d offer you the old chapel house, now that it is liveable again. The team will do their best to make it comfortable for you, I’m sure.”

Bilbo had stuttered a little, and tried to assure Balin that he was perfectly content with his house on the mainland, _thank you very much._

“Unfortunately,” Gandalf had said, pushing the wire frames of his glasses up his nose. “The locals keep raising the rent on the place. They do not seem to have, ah… _warmed_ to the building work being done, and unfortunately that cottage is well over budget now. Unless you’d be happy to make the excess up yourself, we really must insist, old friend.”

He offered Bilbo a genuine grimace of apology, and Bilbo found his shoulders slumping in defeat.

The second piece of news was odd, and Bilbo still was not entirely sure what to make of it. Apparently the family had decided that since the house was already complete, that they might as well move in already.

And so, ten days later, Bilbo stood on the docks as Bard’s boat drew closer, as got his first view of Thorin Durin.

 

* * *

 

 

Footfalls echo in the memory   
Down the passage which we did not take   
Towards the door we never opened   
Into the rose-garden.


	3. Chapter 3

Bilbo had not been looking forward to moving to the island permanently, and as he stood in front of the heavy, warped front door of the chapel house, he felt neither excitement nor anticipation at the thought of his new accommodation: rather, his chest twisted unpleasantly at the feeling of the cool, almost-damp wood under his hand, at the low creak of its hinges as he pushed it open. 

Night was already falling: his suitcase and boxes had been brought up here earlier in the day, but he had delayed retiring for as long as he could, pottering around the island seeing to any job that needed his attention, as well as a few that didn't. 

Bard had just shaken his head when Bilbo had informed him of the news, his heavy gaze staring across the open water with a look that bordered on disappointment.

He couldn't really blame Bard for his lack of enthusiasm: the cottage was dark in the dim light, and chilly, and he huddled deeper into his jumper as he went to find the bedroom. New bedding lay still in its plastic protector on the bed, the new pine of it at odds with the whitewashed walls and the permeating sense of age that the inside of the cottage held: he made up the bed quickly, and rifled through his suitcase for his warmest sleeping clothes before undressing and slipping under the covers.

They were cool against his skin, but at least they felt dry; the heating would kick on in the morning, and hopefully dry the cottage out a little, but for now he felt no urge to go and seek out the boiler.

Instead he curled his legs up against his chest, and pulled the duvet closer around him.

Tiredness had seeped into his bones as the days wore on and this feeling did not dissipate, his sleep restless and perforated with strange dreams that he could not escape from: he woke most morning aching and no better rested than he had been the night before.

Autumn had arrived on the island in full now, the leaves falling in soft drifts underneath the twisted trees. The sea seemed to be a constant companion, the water a bleak and dismal grey, flat in the calmer days and lit with a mirror shine, reflecting only the unpleasant light of the overcast days: on rougher days, when storms rolled in from the horizon, it swirled in angry eddies around the rocks that surrounded the island, the gleaming dark stone as pointed as teeth and just as unfriendly. 

The interior work had begun on the house, Ori's older brother working hard to bring the house into the modern world: the electrics were almost complete, and now warm yellow light pooled from the house on the darker days, lighting up the top of the island. The builders continued to work as the night began to fall each day, seemingly as keen to finish the work and get back to their families and homes as soon as they could - Bilbo could see the distant light of it even now, through the un-curtained windows of his room, a strange source of comfort, reminding him that he was not alone on the island. The team had thinned as the work continued, as one by one different contractors found their work finished and got to leave: there were afternoons when Bilbo might go hours without seeing another person, leaving him with an uncomfortable feeling of isolation. 

At least Bofur and his cousin were still living there, and Nori too; Ori and Dori came over to the island regularly as well, and he was grateful for the company. And, in only a few days, Thorin Durin would arrive, another person to help keep the island populated and to help bridge the deeply disconcerting feeling of loneliness that the island seemed to instil in him. 

Which was odd, in itself: Bilbo had lived alone for many years, and was well used to long afternoons spent in his own company: he had never really felt the cold breathlessness of loneliness before, the dull ache of longing, of needing to see another person, hear another's voice. 

But there was something about this island that made him feel as if he were cut off from the rest of the world, as if all the ties he had once had had been cut; he tried as hard as he could to convince himself otherwise, to call his family and friends to remind him that they were still there, that  _he_ was still there. 

Because sometimes, when the wind made strange noises around the Lonely Rock and the spray of the sea chilled his skin and chapped his lips, he felt as if he wasn't. When he wandered through the gardens, the wind cutting through his layers and tangling his hair, he might have been in another world altogether, the only person in some strange and desolate place in which he didn't belong. 

He closed his eyes to that desolate feeling, trying to push it out of his mind, and listened instead to the sound of the sea: it was a distant and strange sound, ethereal and whisper-soft.

For a moment he thought that it was speaking to him, and then sleep took him.

The dreams came again, though how long he had been asleep before they did he could not tell: they were always similar, full of shadows and the same odd, lingering cool that seemed to almost _breathe_ across his skin, sending the hairs on the back of his neck to attention. 

There was a shape, in his dream, a body that seemed to turn away from him; sometimes he saw walking along the shore, through the grey-slick sand, though it left no footprints; other times it seemed to move through the rocks, or along the cliff top, so close to the edge that it made Bilbo's heart beat faster with fear. 

Tonight it moved through the archways of the hall of Erebor House, disappearing behind the columns silently; Bilbo found himself following, speeding up as the shadow did, until he was almost running; his chest was tight and his breath coming up short, but the chill did not lessen any, even though he could  _hear_ his heartbeat like some distant, threatening drum he still did not find himself any warmer.

"Stop," he heard himself saying, and wasn't surprised when the shadow seemed to listen; the darkness of their incorporate form seemed to grow deeper, for a moment, but there was a flicker of grey in the place where its face should have been, as if it were watching him, quite closely.

Then it reached for him, and there was a shriek of a gull, whirling far above in the grey sky.

For a moment, he paused, just watching, and then he moved to reach back.

He thought he saw a smile, in that grey-dark expression, or perhaps it was a grimace of pain, or anger, or something far worse.

He woke, suddenly, in the cool light of morning, to the sound of breaking waves.

 

* * *

 

 

He had been ready to meet the Lord Durin out on the dock in the mid-afternoon of his day of arrival, but he had been standing there for over an hour by the time he actually arrived, though he offered no word of explanation for the delay. Bard raised his eyebrows at Bilbo as the man climbed the ladder, but offered nothing, either, merely the faintest hint of a quirk of a smile as the Lord was forced to steady himself against a sudden swell of water, just as Bilbo had so often done himself.

In truth, he found that he had missed Bard since moving to the island: the man still came every day, with contractors and with groceries, but Bilbo was normally too busy to make it down to the shore to see him in person. It was strange, really: his conversation had been quiet and often lapsing into silence, but past the dour expression and distant eyes, the man was inherently likeable.

Bilbo nodded his farewells as Bard started the motor on his boat again, the sudden roar of it enough time to delay conversation between him and Thorin Durin enough for Bilbo to look at the man properly.

He had been expecting – well, what had he been expecting?

Bilbo had known that the man was not that much older than him, had known about his own past, but little otherwise had been said. Bilbo rather wished that it had, for it would have at least given himself opportunity to prepare himself for… this.

Thorin Durin was striking, from the heavy weight of his unimpressed scowl to the broad set of his shoulders, the tense line of his jaw and his looming presence; his expression was dissatisfied, and Bilbo found himself wilting under it. He had thought himself old enough to not be easily intimidated by people any more, but his lower lip found itself between his teeth, and he gnawed on it a little anxiously.

He had felt like a useless southerner when first arriving in this grim and bleak place: perhaps he had hoped to find a kindred spirit in this Lord, who had spent nearly as little time on the island as Bilbo himself had several months ago, but everything about this man seemed already to  _belong_ in an unexplainable, intimidating way.

His eyes were startling; the silver in his hair seemed the same colour as the clouds rolling overhead, not quite grey, but a little brighter. 

“So,” Thorin started, his voice low and a little hoarse. “You’re the one from the Trust.”

There could not have been more disdain in his voice if he had tried; 

Bilbo nodded, trying to smile.

“Bilbo Baggins,” he replied, holding out his hand. “It’s good to meet you finally, Lord Durin.”

The man took the offered hand, his frown deepening for a moment as it engulfed Bilbo’s; it was cool and callused, but not unpleasantly so, and despite how distant the Lord already appeared to be there was a momentary flicker of relief in Bilbo's chest at the physical contact. He did not correct the title, as Bilbo had rather hoped he would, and before either had a chance to say anything more a cheerful shout came from the other end of the dock, and he had let go of Bilbo’s hand, and was striding away towards Balin, who he greeted with a great deal more enthusiasm than he had Bilbo.

It could have gone worse, of course, Bilbo consoled himself later as he recounted this story down the phone, crackling with static from the poor reception, to Gandalf; on the other hand, it could have gone a lot better, too.

Unfortunately, he had very little chance to improve upon their working relationship over the next week: he found himself busy with the arrival of the floor boards, which had been brought over when the tide was at their lowest in a great truck: unfortunately, there was no road up to the house but the winding path, and the building team were forced to carry them load by load up to the house by hand, a task which left them in poor spirits when the rain rolled in from the sea. The laying of the floors proved equally problematic, and Bilbo found himself feeling worryingly like his father as he made round after round of tea to appease their low moods and irritated frowns as first one plank split or warped, then another. He might have thought to see Thorin around the house, but the man always seemed to be one room ahead of him, in the same place at a different time.

When they did find themselves in the same room, Thorin seemed to regard him with a queer sort of caution, as if Bilbo had done something heinous to earn his distrust, and Thorin was waiting for him to repeat himself; he began to run their brief interactions through his mind at night as he lay there, kept awake by the sound of the sea and the creak of the wind in the rafters, trying to decide if he _had_ done something, and simply not noticed it.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Bofur told him gently, one afternoon, when Bilbo confided his concerns to him. “Bifur says he’s always been like that.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows curiously at him, and Bofur nodded, his hat flopping across his forehead for a moment before he pushed it back.

“Didn’t I tell you? That’s how we know the family – Thorin and Bifur served together in the army, back in the late eighties and nineties, before Bifur got discharged. Thorin was with him when he was injured, carried him out of there on his back. That’s why we took the job, when no one else would – we’d have lost Bifur if it weren’t for him.”

Bilbo had frowned at that.

“I didn’t know they struggled to find people to work on the project?” he said. He wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this new information about the distant Lord, and so did his best to turn the conversation back to what he was most comfortable discussing – the project.

Bofur nodded again, and scrubbed a hand across his eyes.

“Aye,” he replied. “None of the local firms would take them up on it – they reckon the old place is haunted. Pile of shit, of course, but you can see why they find the old place creepy.”

He slapped the wall, almost affectionately.

“Me, though, I don’t know. The Rock has a presence alright, but it’s not that bad.”

Had it not been unprofessional of him, Bilbo might have vehemently disagreed with that statement, but perhaps that was simply because of his new living quarters. When Balin and Gandalf had told him that he was to move to the chapel house, his misgivings had been about moving to the island itself: he still could not shake the deep disquiet murmuring in his chest, a constant presence reminding him that he _could not get out._

But worse than that, far worse, were the cool rooms of the chapel house, where generations of vicars had once whiled away lonely evenings. He would much have preferred to be staying down in the bay, with the rest of the team.

He had hoped that he would warm to the place, get used to its oddly shaped rooms, and the creak of its staircase, but he hadn't.

If the island were a crescent moon, the small chapel had been built on the southern point of that curve, sat above the bay and accessible only by a steep and slippery set of stone steps down to the shore, or a meandering path that lead back to the pervasive shadow of Erebor House. There was nothing in itself wrong with the chapel house: it had been well restored, and though was a little chilly at times, it was nothing that a good fire banked in the hearth and an extra blanket couldn’t fix. He quite liked the wide desk that Bofur had found for him to pour over invoices and reports at, tucked in a nook under a small window overlooking the bay; he was even coming to terms with the damp air that poured in every time he opened a door or a window.

But the chapel itself had wide, staring windows that seemed, sometimes, to watch him through his bedroom window; the floors creaked and settled as he lay his head down to rest.

He didn’t like having to walk through a graveyard each morning and evening; he had never been a superstitious person, but there was something about the broken and weathered tombstones, the names long worn away by the time and the sea, that left him a little despondent each time.

And though he had at first exclaimed at the stained glass that had somehow survived the long history, the figures in them were strange; the glass seemed to have almost melted in places, their faces having bled away so that now all that was left was a strange, discomforting blankness that reminded him too sharply of the statues in the gardens.

And, though he did not like to air the thought, they also reminded him of the shadow in his dreams.

But he didn’t say that; he just nodded, and laughed along with Bofur at the odd superstitions of the local people, not quite able to ease the heavy weight that seemed to have settled around his shoulders some weeks before, and would not shift.

 

* * *

 

Soon enough more residents arrived on the island, ones that Bilbo had been particularly looking forward to meeting, despite the cool reception he had received from the Lord Durin. Indeed, the first time they had much of a cause to be in the same place at the same time was that evening, as they waited on the dock for the arrival of his sister and his nephews.

The three of them were huddled together at the end of the boat as it pulled in, and Bard cast Bilbo a rather unexpected look of despondence as their eyes met, to which Bilbo had to raise his eyebrows in silent question.

It did not need answering, though; it became quite soon clear what had upset usually unflappable man.

The woman in the boat was dressed all in black, and was as striking as her brother; though her features were somewhat softer, they shared the same dark hair, though where the Lord wore his cropped short, hers was a long mane, coiled now in a thick braid down her back, though here and there the odd strand had escaped and blew across her eyes. She was beautiful, and there really was no other word to describe her, but there was a look of exhaustion about her, her cheeks hollow and the shadows under her eyes dark, a slow lethargy to her movement as she urged her sons upwards and towards the ladder.

Bilbo had read that she was widowed, but he had assumed that it had not been recent: he had clearly been wrong. He knew grief well enough, and it was obvious that it had settled its heavy burden across her, and had yet to loosen its grasp.

She caught his gaze, and there was a flicker of humour that broke through for just a moment.

Her eyes were the same as the Lord’s; the pale, grey-blue of ice on a clear winter’s morning. And wasn’t that, really, what she reminded him of? A cool and fast running water, cut off from the world by a thick layer of ice, waiting for the thaw.

But the current was still there, underneath it all, and so too was the potential for the spring: there was an unsettling strength in that gaze, despite her sorrow, the sense of a woman holding herself together by sheer force of will.

The Lord surprised Bilbo, then. He had expected a warm reunion, of course, but warm was not what he saw as Thorin helped first one boy climb up on the dock, and then the other. He crouched in front of the pair of them, a hand on either one’s shoulder, and looked between them, as if searching for some ill that he could cure, something tangible that he could fix.

The boy’s said nothing; the smaller, dark haired one offered a half-hearted, tentative smile, and then Thorin’s face just _crumbled,_ his stony expression falling apart into something tender and lost, and he pulled them both into his arms with such a longing desperation that Bilbo was forced to look away, out to sea.

The moment demanded privacy, demanded respect: he did his best to give it.

He caught Bard’s eye as he held the boat steady for the lady; his own expression had shifted into a small frown that Bilbo was coming to understand meant confusion. He clearly had not missed the moment, either, and perhaps was as shocked by it as Bilbo; Thorin Durin had not come across as a tender man, but that was really the best way to describe this almost painful show of love.

He let go of the boys as his sister climbed up onto the dock, and turned to her, instead. He simply cradled his sister’s face in his hands for a moment, until she nodded, a flicker of warmth cutting through that ice for just a moment.

“We’re doing alright,” she said, in response to some silent question: perhaps it had passed through Thorin's eyes, or in the line of his jaw, unseen to Bilbo, but she had read it none the less. Then the corner of her mouth curved upwards, just a little. “The boys have missed you, though.”

“And I’ve missed you all,” Thorin replied, and then he was embracing her too, with a bark of quiet, humourless laughter.

Bilbo watched Bard’s hand hover over the engine of his boat for a moment, clearly unwilling to break the gentle silence of their reunion; he only started it when the siblings pulled apart and she turned instead to Bilbo, the loud noise of it cutting through the cool evening.

“I’m Dis,” she said, with that same hint of warmth in her eyes. “And you must be Bilbo Baggins. I’ve heard a lot about you, from Thorin, and from Balin.”

The surprise in his eyes came too quickly for him to suppress it; her eyebrow quirked, for a moment, but she said nothing on it.

“And these are my sons.”

She turned to the young boys, who padded quietly over to her, hand in hand.

“This is Fili,” she said, her hand running gently through the blonde hair of the taller of the two boys; about twelve years old, Bilbo’s mind supplied for him, four years older than his brother. “And this is Kili.” Her other hand settled on the dark haired boy’s shoulder.

“Hullo,” Kili offered, quietly, but Fili said nothing; he glanced, briefly, at Bilbo, before his eyes were drawn to the house on the hill.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” Bilbo said, in turn, nodding his head as he spoke. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too, Lady Dur-”

“Dis,” she interrupted, quite abruptly. “Please, it's only Dis. We’ve never really held with using our titles.”

“Ah,” Bilbo said, his throat suddenly dry, wondering just how much he had offended Thorin that he had not been offered this courtesy; he found that he could not bring himself to look at the Lord, and kept his eyes and smile on his sister, instead. “If you insist. But it really is a pleasure. If you’d like, I’d be more than happy to talk you through the progress that we’ve made, unless you’ve heard it all before.”

“In part,” she said, and then she quite unexpectedly linked her arm through Bilbo’s. “But I’m quite sure that I’d like to hear it from someone who actually knows what he is talking about.” She shot a fond glance over her shoulder at her brother, who was kneeling to let Kili whisper something in his ear.

Bilbo’s laugh sounded a little hollow, even to him.

 

* * *

“I don’t trust him, Balin.”

The voice was low and instantly recognisable from inside the conservatory, whose replacement glass had finally arrived, after long weeks of delays: it was the last part of the external rebuild to be complete, and Bilbo had felt no little sense of relief at watching it go into place before winter had made itself known, sending a silent prayer to anyone who might have been listening that their September had remained relatively dry, for the northern coast.

He and Ori had wandered up together after they had been discussing the chapel, and how best it might be restored inside; though the day remained dry, there was a storm way out to sea, the distant roll of the thunder a muffled sound, and they had thought to watch the crack in the lightning from the warmth of the conservatory, in which were currently propane heaters: the building and landscaping teams had been using it as a tea room of sorts since its completion, in order to duck out of the autumnal chill and damp sea air for a moment.

He had thought it had been empty as they approached; the wide glass windows around three quarters of its circular diameter did not make for many places for hiding, but now he could see the back of Balin’s head, just through the door and towards the curve of the windowless part of the wall; presumably the other speaker, unmistakably Lord Durin, was tucked just out of sight, against the wall itself.

Ori glanced at him uneasily as they slowed to a halt; Bilbo did not look back.

“This is none of his damn business, and I don’t see why he should walk around the island as if he has a right to it, or why he’s staying here. This is _our_ family’s legacy.”

Balin made a low, irritated noise at that, and seemed to fold his arms across his chest.

“And yet we couldn’t have even begun without the help of the trust, and well you know it. Besides, Bilbo’s done a damn good job, and you well know it.”

Bilbo bit his lower lip, worrying it between his teeth; he hadn’t really been delusional enough to believe that they were talking about anyone other than him, but it was still a sharp kick of disappointment to have it confirmed.

“I don’t give a damn, Balin. He shouldn’t be here. He has no place among us.”

To his surprise, Ori’s hand found his wrist, a warm and unexpected point of comfort; when he glanced at the young man’s face, he saw that a small frown was wrinkling between his brows as he stared at the open doorway of the conservatory.

“You’re being ridiculous, Thorin.”

There was a low, thud, as if a fist had landed against a wall.

“He should never have come.”

There was a brief moment of movement from within the conservatory, as if Balin were moving a step closer to Thorin; but he half turned as he did so, throwing a backwards glance over his shoulder, enough to catch sight of the pair of them standing just outside. His mouth half-opened, his eyes betraying his dismay.

Bilbo turned, then, and left, without another word.

 

* * *

 

 

It had been several days since then, and Bilbo had managed to successfully avoid both Balin and the Lord since then, though even if you pressed him he would not have admitted to it being a deliberate thing. He was just… busy. In places where he was sure that the pair of them would not be.

Yes, that was it.

Like today, for instance: Bifur had mentioned his concern at getting some of his planting done in time, and Bilbo had offered to step in. Bifur had been hesitant at first, but when Bilbo had explained his garden at home, the hours he had spent as a child following his mother around, herself a landscape gardener, he had relented, and set Bilbo to work on one of the terraces sheltered on the western side of the island.

It was actually a therapeutic distraction, the turning of the soil and the planting of hardy evergreen perennials, in the hopes that they would take in time before the frost came, and he had been at work for several hours when he first became aware that he was not alone.

There was a strange rustle from somewhere close to him; a shift in the leaves in one of the hedgerows to his left. He watched it out of the corner of his eye for a moment, until he caught sight of a flash of blonde hair, and the scuffed edge of a small shoe as it disappeared out of sight.

“Hmm,” said Bilbo, quite loudly. “It’s very strange, Bifur didn’t say he was planting any shaking bushes, but I swear that one over there just moved.”

The bushes suddenly stilled, with a low noise of surprise; it was quiet and unbidden, as if snatched from the throat quite without intention. Bilbo hid a smile as he lifted one of the small plants from the tray beside him, and loosened its roots gently with his hands.

“And my goodness, it made a noise too, I must ask him where he found it.”

No noise or sound came for a moment or so; Bilbo finished with the roots, and slid the plant into the hole he had just dug, scooping earth into the hollow with his hands to surround it.

“Ah, of course, it would make a lot more sense if there were someone watching me,” he continued, patting the cool soil down with his hands. “And actually, it is a shame that there isn’t: I’ve got a rather large seed cake that I can’t possibly eat by myself.”

There was another rustle, as if a moment of intense, silent deliberation were going on from behind the bushes, and then all of a sudden two heads popped up from behind, one dark and one fair; Fili and Kili stared at him for a long moment until they stepped out from around it, streaks of mud on their jeans and a stray leaf stuck in Kili’s hair.

“Hullo,” Kili offered, his eyes curious as they watched Bilbo begin to dig another hole.

“Well, hello there,” Bilbo replied, feigning surprise as he put down his trowel. “Where on earth did you come from?”

Kili shuffled a little, and glanced up at his older brother, but Fili was watching Bilbo quite carefully, a small frown creasing between his eyebrows.

“Behind the bushes,” Kili admitted after a moment, and Bilbo nodded, brushing the dirt from his trousers and pulling off his gardening gloves. His hands looked very pale against the dark earth: he’d gained much less of a tan this year than he would have done had he been at home, spending his weekends in the gardens or rambling around the nearby hills.

“I see,” Bilbo said, nodding. “You’re both very good at hiding.”

The corner of Fili’s mouth curved briefly, but whether it was in pleasure or that special kind of derision that children reserve for adults who are humouring them, Bilbo could not tell.

“Would you like some cake?”

Kili’s nose wrinkled a little, and his mouth pulled indecisively.

“Is it healthy?”

Bilbo inclined his head, reaching for the cake, wrapped in greaseproof paper: Bard had surprised him with it only this morning, handing it over to him with a scowl and a brief mention of his daughter, who apparently liked to bake.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Kili’s expression looked equal parts disgusted and hopeful as he eyed the honey-coloured cake that Bilbo began to unwrap.

“Ma says seeds are healthy,” he explained, craning his head to look at the cake, as if it might suddenly morph into something much more palatable to a child; a chocolate cake, perhaps, or something covered in icing. “Like fruit. Only I don’t like fruit cake, you see.”

“Hmm,” replied Bilbo, scratching at his chin; he left a deliberate smudge of dirt against his skin, and Kili grinned at the sight, a sudden and bright smile that came quite from nowhere, and disappeared almost as quickly. “Well, it might be a _little_ bit healthy, but it certainly isn’t as boring as fruit cake.”

“Mmkay,” he said, after a long moment of deliberation, before some half-forgotten lesson on manners seemed to occur to him. “I mean, only if that is okay.”

“Of course,” Bilbo answered, and offered a smile at Fili, too, who had yet to speak. “You’re both more than welcome.”

He broke the cake into three pieces, roughly equal, and handed them each one; Kili watched Fili carefully as the other brother took a tentative bite. It was only when he took a second, larger one that he too started eating.

The cake was gone in moments, and the boys soon afterwards, but Bilbo had seemed to strike a chord with them. Over the next few days they continued to reappear, sometimes quite suddenly, and always together. Fili continued to say nothing to him, but Bilbo had the feeling that he shouldn’t take it personally: he rather suspected that the boy said very little if he could help it.

Kili began to speak a little more to him, though, and on occasion flashed one of those impossibly bright smiles whenever he seemed to forget himself. Sometimes they decided to help him with his tasks, other times they just trailed after him: on occasion he told them a story or two, and more than once, when he was singing a song to keep himself company, he would look up to see them both watching him, their heads turned slightly to one side, their eyes bright and interested.

And it was on one such afternoon that Bilbo felt the tell-tale sensation of other watching eyes, prickling the hair on the back of his neck.

He had glanced around them, and a flicker of movement from the terrace above had caught it attention, the swish of a coat as a person turned away.

It was a familiar coat though, and it was difficult to miss the tall, imposing Lord, even as he did his best to slip away, unseen, back towards the house.

 

* * *

 

   The river is within us, the sea is all about us;  
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite  
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses  
Its hints of earlier and other creation


	4. Chapter 4

The chill of winter was beginning to settle into the bones of the Rock, this autumn feeling brief and transitory compared to previous years: it seemed to Bilbo that it had been one moment the summer, albeit a dreary and rainy one, and then in the next the trees were bare, their skeletal branches seeming to curve into the hillside of the Rock as if to protect themselves.

He had yet to wake up to true frost, but there had been more than one morning where the air was so chill that he was surprised that it wasn't dancing a pattern across his window panes. 

Things went on much as they had done before: if he had expected the arrival of the Durin’s to really affect the way that the island was developing, then he would have been disappointed. The Lord Durin (still, noticeably, not just ‘Thorin’ to Bilbo) remained distant and a little severe, though the longer the boys were on the island the more often Bilbo was able to catch a glimpse of the man that he might have been had he not worn such a stern and serious expression so often.

Bilbo did not know if Thorin was aware that he had overheard his conversation with Balin, nor did he feel the need to inquire: Balin had tried to talk to him about it shortly after, but Bilbo had quite firmly rebuffed the man’s gentle attempts to soothe, reminding both the older gentleman (and perhaps too, himself) that there was no need for the family to do anything more than tolerate him: this was his job, after all, and for all that the Durin’s were not technically his employers, there was certainly no cause for them to become friends unless by fortunate coincidence.

Balin had nodded to that, though he had not looked as if he had entirely agreed.

Fortunately, Dis seemed either unaware of her brother’s obvious disdain for Bilbo, or simply unconcerned: she was often withdrawn when her sons were not around her, and more than once he had come across her sitting in the garden, her hands at the wedding band kept on a chain around her throat, but when she was not she was kind to Bilbo, friendly, willing to start up a conversation about the house, the island, or even Bilbo himself.

He spent one rather pleasant afternoon in the conservatory with her one slow day, a heavy rain shower distorting the view through the glass windows, sat with large mugs of tea on the fold-up stools the building team had left in there: through some lucky chance the rest of the team had been entirely occupied, leaving them alone in the unofficial break room, and conversation had soon turned from Bilbo’s own life to Dis’.

“My husband and I,” she said, after he remarked upon a particular manor house that the Trust had overseen, “We were married there, you know.”

Bilbo’s mouth opened, just a little, unsure of what to say: she offered him a queer, unhappy smile, and took a long sip from her mug.

“Thorin insisted on paying, wouldn't let us contribute at all, and then scowled at Vili throughout the whole thing.”

She laughed, and for a moment a flash of something bright and happy sparked in her gaze.

“He’s always been very good at glaring, since he was a teenager – I don’t think he realises he does it, half the time. Vili was always a little afraid of him, but Thorin quite liked him, really.”

Bilbo stared down into his mug for a moment.

“Would you like to talk about him?” he said, when an awkward silence threatened to settle around them. “Not even now, if… just, any time, that you might want to, I’d be happy to listen.”

She looked at him, then, a strangely collected glance, and he recalled the way Thorin had first appeared when he had stepped off the boat, as if he belonged. So too did Dis, in a similar way: there was something so inherently strong about the both of them, as if they had been cut from some bleak cliff face by the hand of an austere sculptor; they looked to Bilbo as if they could be timeless, that no storm could ever weather them. There were fine lines around Dis’ eyes and streaks of silver in Thorin’s hair, but they seemed not to wear their age as a burden but instead as a mark of victories won; like the Rock itself they were shaped by time but impossible to imagine diminished.

Their eyes were the sea and rolling storms, the strong curve of his jaw the jutting rock of the island, the softer line of hers the stretch of sand at low tide.

And then she smiled, a proper smile, so achingly similar for a brief moment to the one that slipped across Kili’s face that any further words he might have spoken caught in his throat, quite lost to the sight of her.

“Thank you,” she said, and though the smile faded it played at the corner of her mouth for a little while. “And thank you, as well, for what you’ve been doing with the boys. They’ve been a little… well.” She shrugged, and stared through the rolling lines of rain against the glass to the sea beyond. “They’ve been lost, since their father died. Well, we all have.”

He nodded, and touched her wrist, a fleeting moment of contact.

“Fili hasn’t spoken since the funeral, you know,” she continued, a moment later. “And Kili won’t go to sleep in any room other than Fili’s, either. They’ve been…”

Once again she shrugged, a small gesture, and she seemed to huddle into herself a little further.

“It’s nice,” she said, in the end, seeming to struggle how to explain it. “To see them warming to another person. We took them out of school, in the end, they just couldn’t cope with being apart in classrooms, but it is good to see them like this again, listening to another person. Thorin said he heard Kili laughing, the other day, at a story you were telling them.”

A strange and incomprehensible shudder worked its way down Bilbo’s spine at the realisation that Thorin had been watching them, odd and not entirely unpleasant.

“I didn’t realise that he…” he trailed off, biting his lip.

Dis glanced at him, the corner of her mouth twitching a little.

“He’s very protective of the boys,” she told him. “He likes to make sure that they are alright.”

Bilbo nodded, not entirely sure what to say to that.

They sat in silence for a moment longer, and then Dis sighed.

“The rain is stopping,” she remarked, quietly. “I suppose we’d better go back to the House.”

Bilbo nodded; work called, as it always did, but the odd tightness in his chest did not dissipate as they left their mugs on the counter and made their way back to the house. The great windows met them as they came from the conservatory, only a moment away through the rain, which was closer to a light drizzle now, and when a flicker of movement behind one caught his eye, he found himself unable to look away from the sight of the Lord Durin, standing framed by the great arch of stone and glass, watching them both walk back to the House.

His expression was unreadable, his brow drawn into a contemplative frown.

When he caught Bilbo’s eye it did not seem to change, and Bilbo kept his gaze until the Lord broke it, and backed away from the glass.

 

* * *

 

Now that the interior work on the House and the Chapel was well underway, Bilbo found himself in the conservatory again later in the week, with Ori, trying to decide how best to progress with the odd room. Bofur was with them too, ostensibly to learn more about the building and its original function, though Bilbo suspected that it was more a desire to escape the arduous plastering that was currently being undertaken within Erebor House. None the less he seemed very interested in what they knew of the conservatory’s use over the long history of the site, asking questions and prompting Ori to continue whenever the young historian grew flustered, and apologised for rambling in that self-effacing manner of many academics.

“So it was a sitting room, really?” Bofur clarified, his hands in his pockets. “And a studio, and a study?”

Ori nodded, enthusiastically.

“The windows mean there is so much light in here: apparently some of the inhabitants of the House kept a writing desk in here, and others took to drawing. It’s a bit of a struggle to decide how best to dress it, really,” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little as his gaze followed the lines of the recently-restored cornicing. “It’s been so many things, and we have to pick just one to set it out, now.”

Bilbo nodded in agreement.

“I was thinking of asking Dis and Lord Durin,” he chipped in, tucking his hands in his pockets. “They will be living here, after all, it makes sense to create a room that they might want to use when the Rock is out of season.”

“Good idea,” Bofur replied, puffing out his cheeks for a moment as he thought. “Oh, by the way, I have something in here to show you. One of the lads found it when they were fitting the glass, I thought you might be able to shed some light on it.”

He led them across the room, swerving between the stools and the propane heaters: Bilbo shivered as they left the pocket of warmth behind them and drew closer to the glass.

Bofur pointed out a wooden beam, a joint that ran between the ceiling and wall. Many of them had been replaced: decades of being left exposed to the elements by the smashed glass meant that most were saturated beyond relief, and unable to be used to support the new roof. A few, however, had proved sound enough to be left in place, and the dark, pitted surface of this one gave it away as one of these.

“There,” he said, pointing something out at its lowest point. “See?”

Bilbo rose on tip-toe to get a little closer, and Ori pushed his glasses up his nose as he too craned to see.

It wasn’t immediately obvious, but soon it became clear what Bofur was indicating, though Bilbo must have overlooked it many times having only given the beam a cursory glance. There were two words carved into the wood, deep and a little uneven, and clearly not professionally done: there was an angular slant to the lettering, as if someone had carved it angrily, or in a moment of great upset.

" _mortem moratur_ ," Bilbo read aloud, and from beside him, Ori shivered, perhaps unconsciously.

Bofur looked between them, chewing on the inside of his mouth; Ori reached upwards, trailing his fingers along the beam, though Bilbo noticed that he didn’t quite touch the letters, just the wood around them.

"Death lingers," the historian translated, his hands dropping back to his side and disappearing into his fraying sleeves. Bilbo glanced at him, and offered him a reassuring smile.

"They're just words," he told Ori, despite the unpleasant and unexplained fear that had curled in his chest, too. "Just old words, carved into a beam."

He had meant to be reassuring, for himself as well as for the others, but they fell flat in the quiet room, hollow and a little unsure.

"Strange words," Bofur commented, his eyes glancing outside and to the roll of the sea. "To carve in some pretty lady's sewing room."

Bilbo didn't have anything to say that.

Far away from them, across the sea, the clouds began to build.

 

* * *

 

 

It was perhaps a week or so later when a great upset stirred the few inhabitants of the island, and though he would not realise it until afterwards, it would change the balance of Bilbo’s relationship with the Durin family.

Bilbo only became aware that something was wrong at some point in the late afternoon, when he was leafing through one of the great folders of antique furniture that Dori had left with him. He was in the Great Hall of Erebor House at the time, the cold stone of the flagged floor sinking through the soles of his shoes. Weak sunshine had forced its way through the clouds that day, and Bilbo had found himself quite distracted by watching the play of it against the choppy sea when Dis came in, her normally calm and collected movements jolted and unsure, her hands wringing at her front.

“Bilbo!” she called, at the sight of him, a note of fear audible in her voice. “Have you seen the boys?”

He dropped the folder on the builders’ trestle table at his side, half-turning towards her, eyes creasing as he began to frown.

“No,” he ventured, trying to ignore the coil of fear that tightened in his chest at the disappointment in the way that Dis’ shoulders slumped. “Why?”

She swallowed, hard.

“They were supposed to be upstairs, but they’ve disappeared: it’s easy enough for them to slip out of this place, it’s so damn _big,_ and now I can’t find them and they’re not answering even when Thorin calls, and his voice carries so far, and no one has seen them in the gardens or down by the beach and I don’t know where they are and-”

Before he quite knew what he was doing Bilbo found himself in front of her, his hands on her shoulders.

“Don’t worry,” he said, and his voice was much calmer than he himself was feeling. Memories of those rocks jutting out the sea, of the swirl of eddies at high tide, of the darkness of the fissures in the rock played in his mind, scenarios he didn’t dare contemplate threatening to play out in his head. “Where are people looking?”

She took a deep breath.

“Thorin’s in the gardens,” she said, her hands clutching at her jumper. “With Bifur. Nori and Bofur are looking around the headland, they’ve got people checking the shore and the builder’s cottages, and around the cliff face. I came back in to make sure they’re not down in the cellars, or in the old servants quarters, or anything like that.”

Bilbo nodded. “Is anyone checking around the Chapel?”

Dis’ eyes were wide, and a little unfocused.

“I don’t know,” she replied, a quavering note to her voice, the deep fear of a mother whose children were missing in a potentially dangerous place making itself known. “I’m not sure, maybe, I-”

“I’ll go there,” Bilbo told her, squeezing her shoulders gently. “You go and check the cellars, okay?”

He took off at a brisk pace in the direction of his own cottage, a strange conviction that he was heading in the right way cutting through the anxiousness building in his chest. He hadn’t seen the boys all day, and had in fact been wondering at the fact that his two shadows hadn’t appeared as they usually did when he spent the day around the house, but it had never occurred to him that something might have happened to them.

The chapel seemed dark against the sky, the clouds starting to gather again, so now the sunlight broke through in slanting beams, copper-gold through the grey that was surrounding them, but any comfort that he might have had at the sunlight was long gone.

The wind seemed to pick up as he strode through the broken gravestones, past the narrow path to his own cottage; he would have continued on towards the furthest crest of the rise, but as he drew closer a low, keening noise came to his ears, indistinct words mumbled around them, and he followed the sound to the edge of the cliff.

"Kili!"

There the boy was, lying flat on the ground, half off the edge: Bilbo ran to him even as Kili half-turned, his hands still reaching down the fall, as if striving to grasp something.

"Mr Boggins!" he cried, "Help!"

The ground surrounding Kili looked new and raw, the earth-brown too stark against the grey-green grass, as if it had only recently been exposed. A low thud of fear seemed to echo around his chest as he threw himself down to the ground beside the younger boy, already knowing what he would see.

Fili was clinging to the rocks, balanced precariously, dirt smeared across his face and a certain wideness to his eyes betraying how close to panic he really was. His mouth was half open in a silent shriek, his eyes startlingly blue against the background of the sea, and he half-let go of the rock he was clinging to for a moment as if to reach for Bilbo, a stuttered and aborted motion that he could not complete for fear of falling.

"Hold on, Fili," Bilbo said, "Don't panic. Can you reach my hand?"

He lay flat against the earth, stretching as far as he could, but it was impossible: Fili was just out of reach, and Bilbo didn't want to ask him to try and climb any further: he could already see the way that the earth on the small ledge that Fili had been able to find was crumbling. He had been almost impossibly lucky, that he had managed to scramble a hold: anyone larger might not have found it, might already be lost to the drop and the ragged edge of the rocks below. 

The sea seemed too loud in his ears; there was nothing to be done from up here.

"Okay, Fili, that's fine," he said, trying to keep the note of fear from his voice. "Just stay very still, and shift along a little. Don't move too quickly, take it slow, alright?"

Fili nodded, tears streaking through the dirt on his cheeks.

"Kili," Bilbo said, quietly but firmly enough to catch the younger boy's attention despite his fear. He slid his phone out of his pocket and passed it to him. "Find Bofur's number on there and call him, now."

Kili didn't ask, just did, his fingers slipping over the buttons; the call connected as Bilbo slid over the clliff top, and eased himself slowly down towards the ledge. He could hear the buzz of Kili's chatter as his head ducked below the line of the cliff top, but it was oddly muted by the wind, as if it were wrapping itself around the island, holding it in some cold and close embrace.

There was a terrifying moment between letting go and feeling the edge of the ledge under his feet; a moment even worse when he was forced to throw himself against the hard scrape of the rock, cutting into his hands. As soon as he steadied himself his hand went instead to Fili's hair, carding through it as best he could, though whether he was trying to soothe the boy, himself, or the both of them, he wasn't sure.

The ledge shook under his feet, crumbling a little further.

"I'm going to boost you up, okay?" he told him, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible. "And you're going to grab hold of Kili and I'm going to push you up. You've got to scramble as best you can, alright?"

Fili nodded, his eyes firmly fixed on Bilbo's face, seeming to drink it in. 

Boosting him up was easier than Bilbo had expected, for all that he had to keep his stomach pressed firmly to the rock in an effort to steady himself. Fili was lighter than he had expected, the bones of his wrist feeling too pronounced under his hand, bird-hollow and fey. His hair was dull in the grey light, but Bilbo found himself pressing a reassuring kiss to the boy's crown as he began to lift him, his arms straining still; Fili reached up for his brother, and with a low cry of relief Kili managed to take hold of his arms, and began to haul him upwards. 

Fili's shoes kicked at the dirt, sending a spray of it into Bilbo's face, into his slightly opened mouth; the taste was cloying and foetid, and he had t swallow down a potent wave of nausea as Fili's torso went over the sharp angle of the cliff top, then his hips, then his legs, until finally the two boys collapsed against the grass.

Now it was just Bilbo left on the ledge, and he reached for a handhold as best he could to pull himself back to the top; there was suddenly the distant murmur of voices, coming through from somewhere close by.

He reached for a jut of rock, for a place to hold himself from, for a ledge; the rock crumbled a little further under his feet. 

The sea beat a drum in his ears.

He wasn't going to make it.

He was going to fall.

A beam of that copper-soft sunlight lit the top of the chapel steeple, the only part of the island he could see from here.

The earth was moving under his feet: the rock was slick under his hands.

The strange, swooping sensation of falling crashed through him like a wave.

Then quite suddenly a hand was on his wrist, burning against his cool skin, holding it tight enough to hurt, but that pain was a good one, for it was an anchor. His feet scrambled for purchase against the rock as he was heaved upwards, as he was dragged, the rock cutting his skin, scraping him bloody, but he couldn't bring himself to care. The cliff top came to view, the grass, still waving in the wind, and then he was on his knees against the ground, the cool damp of it soaking through his trousers. 

He could have kissed it.

Then a small body was throwing itself around his middle, when he was still dazed enough to not really be able to process what was happening, and at first he thought it must have been Kili, because that body was wrapping itself around his shoulders and crying into his neck, crying indistinct words, a murmur of 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry' and 'Mr Boggins', but there was blonde hair in the corner of his eye, and the voice was rougher than Kili's, as if it had not been used in a long time.

"That's alright," he said, as he wrapped an arm around Fili. "That's more than alright. You're fine, you're absolutely fine."

He pulled back as his mother ran over, someone obviously having told her where her boys were: she fell to her knees as they both ran to her. 

Then Dis’ arms were around the boys, holding both of them close to her, their faces buried in her neck and her head bowed across theirs, and Bilbo could just hear her words, mumbled declarations of love and scolding and a strange and desperate kind of joy coming unbidden from her as their hands fisted in her jumper.

He might have stepped away, left the family to their private moment, or else sat down himself, but as he half-turned away from the scene he found himself confronted with Thorin, suddenly close, and Bilbo only had a moment to take in how open his expression was, to take in that he wasn’t frowning, before his arms were around Bilbo, holding him tight to his chest, his cheek pressed against the side of Bilbo’s head.

There was a scared desperation to the hold, but Thorin’s body was warm and solid, his shirt soft against Bilbo’s face as he rested his head, for just a moment, against the curve of his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Thorin murmured against Bilbo’s scalp, and he tried to suppress the shudder that worked its way through his body as Thorin’s arms tightened around him, as that voice and the warmth of his breath seemed to ignite the still-present tension that had not had a chance to bleed from him.

He could feel his heartbeat in his throat, could _hear_ it: before he could convince himself to be sensible, his own arms wound around Thorin’s middle, his hands grasping for purchase against the broad planes of his back, his shirt a little damp against his skin from spray from the sea.

“Thank you for saving my boy,” Thorin said again, and he didn’t let go for a very long moment; when he did, his hands were firm against Bilbo’s shoulders, keeping him drawn close to him.

Bilbo laughed, and it felt surprisingly good to do so. "Thank you for saving _me,_ " he said, watching the way that the corner of Thorin's mouth twitched upwards, but Thorin just shook his head.

“I resented your presence,” he said, looking down at Bilbo, still almost a little too close for comfort. Bilbo could feel the warmth of him, his physical presence, could smell his skin. “You didn’t deserve that.”

It wasn’t quite an apology, not a proper one, but there was an honesty to his voice and a certain pain in Thorin’s gaze, and Bilbo found himself shaking his head.

“I’d have done the same,” he replied, his voice quiet, as low as Thorin’s own had been. “I know it must feel like an intrusion, to have the trust here, to have me here.”

Thorin shook his head too as he slowly let go of Bilbo’s shoulders.

“No,” he replied, but he said no more; instead he reached for Bilbo’s face, and for a moment he was certain that Thorin was going to cup his cheek; instead he pulled a strand of ripped moss from a curl, but when he looked down at Bilbo he smiled, and there was a warmth and a respect in that smile that seemed to ease the heavy weight of the Rock, the pressing solitude of this strange and dismal place.  

 

* * *

 

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older  
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated  
Of dead and living.


	5. Chapter 5

“Be careful with that!” Dori snapped at Bofur and Nori, who were carrying a rather large desk up the winding path to Erebor House. “That is one of a kind!”

Nori pulled a face at his older brother, clearly still unhappy that he had been roped into helping carry the first delivery of furniture up to the House. He let go with one hand in order to gesture rudely in Dori’s direction, causing the desk to wobble precariously in their grasp: Bofur swore as he stumbled, and for a moment it looked as if the desk (worth more than Bilbo even cared to think about) looked as if it might tumble to the ground and down the steep face of the terraces, but before it could Nori’s hands were back in place, keeping them both upright, and saving a rather valuable antique from an untimely demise.

Dori’s face was livid, but Bilbo had to turn away to stop himself from showing his amusement.

“Idiot boy,” the older brother seemed to spit. “No appreciation for art.”

Bilbo patted his arm comfortingly.

“Don’t worry yourself so,” he told Dori, as he watched several men unload a bed frame. “Nori isn’t that reckless: I don’t think he’d deliberately do any damage, you know.”

Dori snorted, but didn’t reply; instead he waved politely at Balin and Thorin, who had appeared on the terrace above them, and were watching the proceedings with no small amount of interest.

Thorin caught Bilbo’s eye, and nodded at him.

Since the previous week, when Bilbo had nearly taken a tumble from off the side of the cliff, he hadn’t seen that much of Thorin; when he did, however, the Lord seemed to have thawed considerably.

Just yesterday he ran into Thorin in one of the eastern drawing rooms of the house; the dark wooden panelling, polished to a high shine, made the light room oddly dark, and the scarred wood of the reclaimed floorboards gave it a sense of the age that the room really was.

Once the furniture was in it would look as it would have done if Erebor House had never burnt. The feeling was oddly disquieting, as if some sense of the past was returning to the house.

Even now, Thorin stood in the room as if he belonged in it, his broad shoulders filling the windowpane as he stared out across the sea; it had been smooth as glass and almost silver under uncharacteristic winter sunshine that day, seemingly undisturbed for miles around by even the swell of a fishing boat or the slick body of a grey seal breaking through the water. Thorin must have heard Bilbo come in, for he half-turned even as he hesitated in the doorway, unsure of whether or not to intrude.

“The furniture begins to arrive tomorrow, doesn’t it?” Thorin asked, his voice deep but oddly gentle, as if he were afraid of startling Bilbo.

“The first van arrives early in the morning, so it’ll be a long day.”

Thorin nodded, and placed his hands behind his back, turning again to the horizon.

“We’ll try and help out as much as we can.”

Bilbo had hesitated for a long moment, in the doorway, unsure whether the conversation was over or not. A gull screamed somewhere above, and then the dark shadow of it wheeled across the view.

“Ah, Lord Durin?”

“It’s just Thorin, Mr Baggins,” came the Lord’s curt reply, “And I apologise that for not saying that to you sooner.”

The tone lacked any resentment or anger, but there was a queer sense about it nonetheless, and Bilbo couldn’t quite tell if Thorin was unimpressed with himself, or simply felt a little awkward at having to apologise. Bilbo had nodded before realising that Thorin couldn’t see him.

“If you’re quite sure, then I’m afraid I must insist on Bilbo, in return.”

Thorin glanced back over his shoulder at him, the hard line of his mouth softened just a little by the barest hint of a smile, curving across the corner.

“Bilbo,” he repeated, and the sound of his own name, in that deep and comforting voice, made something hot and tight twist in his chest, a strange pain that he didn’t quite understand. Thorin nodded at him, his mouth moving just a little further upwards as a flush of embarrassment began at the base of Bilbo's throat. It only grew as Thorin continued to stare at him, his eyebrows quirking up in question.

“You were going to ask me a question?” he said eventually, when it became clear to Thorin that Bilbo was not going to say anything more to him. Bilbo flushed harder as he realised that he had completely forgotten what it was that he had intended to ask.

“Ah,” he replied, waving his hands at Thorin, “It doesn’t matter, honestly.”

Thorin had nodded, and turned back to the window, leaving Bilbo able to slip away, still feeling a little embarrassed.

He had wandered through the House for some hours after that, making last minute adjustments to his plans for the furniture and the soft furnishings, but his heart had not really been it: he’d been too distracted with the odd warmth that that brief conversation had left in him.

He smiled back up at Thorin now, a small and warm expression, before glancing back to the struggle of the workmen and abedframe, which was slightly too wide for the narrow space between two boulders the way it was; the six men moving it had to turn it on their side, with much swearing and huffing as they went.

But over the course of the next few days more and more furniture made it to the island and up the steep path to the House: Dori bemoaned the loss of one armchair, whose arm was irreparably scratched when one man slipped and it was gouged by a rock, but otherwise it was completed successfully. Now the furniture sat, stacked, in the right rooms, just waiting to be unpacked and placed in the proper positions.

Fili and Kili took great delight in hiding behind the great desks and towering bookshelves, darting in and out of boxes of curtains and wall hangings, crawling into the space left between the wall and the great paintings, propped up against them.

It was with a certain sense of relief that Bilbo now padded from room to room, pointing the workmen to the right place as they began to hang the paintings. Most of them, unfortunately, were reproductions: whilst Erebor House had once boasted a number of impressive original paintings from throughout its lengthy history, those that hadn’t been devastated by fire had been destroyed by being left to the elements, instead. Only a small number which Thrain had had sent away to be valued had survived, and had been returned from where several museums had been keeping them in storage.

They had come back with some strange notes attached – apparently Thrain had wanted them x-rayed, though he had never specified why.

They were odd paintings, and left Bilbo feeling ill at ease – huge swathes of shadows and dark oils left them feeling gloomy, and Bilbo was certain he could see eyes peering through the thick forest in one, though no one else had been able to see it.

It was at this painting, now hung in the hallway, that he found himself staring once more, distracted as he made his rounds. There was a dark smudge through the lines of the trees, stark silver birches and unpleasant ferns; there was a sense of impending winter about the picture, a dark chill that spoke of rotting leaves and the forest curling in on itself, the birds flying away.

A hand curled around his, and he glanced down, resisting the urge to jump at the unexpected contact.

Fili glanced up at him, his hair bright in the dusty light of the hall, his eyes wide before they darted back to the painting again.

He tugged on Bilbo’s fingers, and bit his lip; for a moment Bilbo thought the boy might say something, but then he was gone, his hand slipping from Bilbo’s, and he disappeared through another doorway, into the dark depths of the House.

 

* * *

 

The other great change since the previous week, apart from the arrival of the furniture and the sudden thaw of the frost between Bilbo and Thorin, had been in Fili: though he still was not quite as talkative as his brother, and certainly nothing like the child he had apparently been before, he had taken to smiling a little more often, and occasionally even saying something, though his words were still hoarse, with a strange and breathless quality, as if he were still trying to remember how to speak.

It had broken Bilbo’s heart a little, to see the way Dis and Thorin’s faces had crumbled as they had walked back Erebor House together, and Fili had answered his mother’s questions with quiet, collected words, rather than nods.

Kili’s face had been calm, unsurprised, as if he had always known that his brother would come back to them, content that it would only be a matter of time.

Now he followed his brother with a small, content smile every time Fili spoke, though the older brother was still reserved.

The next person to see him speak had been Balin, and Bilbo wasn’t sure if he would ever forget the way that the old man’s face had simply _broken_ as Fili had responded to his panicked, ‘are you alright, lad?’ with a nod, still clutching to his mother’s waist.

“M’okay, Uncle Balin.”

Family was what you made of it, Bilbo had learnt; Balin may only have been a cousin of Thorin’s, a tenuous relationship to the boys that might not have meant a lot in other families, but it was clear that the extended Durin family were as tightly knit as they come. Balin might as well have been their father or grandfather for the way a desperate sort of relief had flooded his expression, his normally neutral and calm gaze as riotous as the storms that threw themselves at the Rock.

Bilbo was not ignorant enough to believe that it was for any other reason that so many of the workmen and the family had significantly warmed to him, and neither did he believe that it was simply the fact that he had saved Fili from falling off the cliff face that had broken the barrier between outsider and family.

No, it had been more than that.

“You brought him back to us,” Dis told him later, tipsy off cheap whiskey and more emotional than Bilbo had ever seen her. They’d been sat, freezing, wrapped up in jumpers on the steps in front of the main doors, smoking Bofur’s pungent roll up cigarettes and watching the moon dip in and out of the clouds. Her voice had been quiet and a little slurred, the breeze almost obscuring it, and there was a part of him that didn’t want to hear it: he didn’t know how to answer her.

“He’s not spoken in months, he’s not laughed or smiled or wanted to spend any time with anyone other than Kili, and then he met you.”

He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to apologise or not; there was a pain in her voice, a deep regret that it had not been her that had broken through to him, a mother’s love and grief that she had not been able to help as much as she had felt that she should.

He’d patted her arm, inhaled another mouthful of smoke, so thin tendrils of it blew in plumes out of his nostrils as he answered, wreathing his face in the darkness.

“Everyone takes time,” he answered, his voice low and a little distant as he thought of his own mother. “Sometimes it helps to talk to an outsider, rather than someone close to you who is going through the same thing.”

The door creaked behind them, cutting off any reply that she might have given; Thorin sat down beside Dis, took her cigarette from her fingers, and inhaled deeply.

They didn’t say anything more that night; the three of them sat in cold but comfortable silence as the clouds rolled above them, until Bilbo stumbled back to his chill little cottage, and fell into a deep but restless sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

“Bilbo, Thorin was looking for you.”

Bofur’s grin was innocent, but the hair on the back of Bilbo’s neck still prickled at his words in a way that he didn’t quite understand.  He just nodded, despite the strange tightening in his chest, and stood up from where he had been kneeling, sanding over a scratch in the paintwork on the cornicing, scratched from a misplaced table, ready for it to be painted again.

He brushed the dust off his knees, and nodded.

“Where is he?”

Bofur shrugged, and began pulling the protective plastic off a tall drinks cabinet.

“He said he’d be in the library for a while.”

The library was Bilbo’s favourite room in the House, a fact that he had not been shy about admitting to everyone else working on the project. It wasn’t perhaps as large as the libraries that might be found in other manor houses, but it was still an impressive size, with huge windows running down one length of it, overlooking the terraced gardens and the gentle slope down to the dock rather than the wide expanse of the sea. The other three walls had just been lined again with tall bookshelves, apart from a small nook on one side of the great chimney breast, that went in deeper than the other. In the recess had been hung one of the less intimidating of the reproduction paintings, one of the ones that Bilbo himself had chosen, rather than Balin or Gandalf: the rolling hills and blue-grey evening sky were comforting in a way that he could not quite explain.

The great fireplace had yet to be lit: they were still waiting for the delivery of logs and coal from the mainland for the many fires in the house, but it often seemed, at least to Bilbo, to be the warmest of the rooms, the least susceptible to the chill of the North Sea. He knew that if he were to live here, the library would be where he would hole up on long and lonely afternoons, when all he had for company were the screaming gulls and the roar of the tide.

But he wouldn’t be living here, he reminded himself as he slowly walked up the wide staircase, his hand ghosting along the dark, wooden rail.

He’d be back in London, in his own house, with his own books and his cat and his quiet little life.

Thorin was not reclined on one of the armchairs that Bilbo had moved into the recess as he had half-expected; neither was he staring out of the window at the island as he so often was when Bilbo came across him.

Instead the tall man was stood in the middle of the room, by the full boxes of books, his hand on one and his other on the wall, though he turned and offered Bilbo something close to a smile as the smaller man approached.

“Bofur said you were looking for me?” he asked as he drew closer, the large room having an uncomfortable habit of echoing when one spoke too loud from too far away. Thorin merely inclined his head in acknowledgement, though then his jaw tightened as a thought seemed to occur to him.

“Though I did not mean to summon you,” Thorin told him, his deep voice filling up the room, though Bilbo could not find himself to feel uncomfortable at the sound, for all that he normally disliked the way a voice sounded in a large room like this. “I merely meant that if you had a moment free, then I would have liked a word.”

Bilbo nodded, and continued to watch the other man even as the Lord’s gaze returned to the shelves, to the floorboards, to the great open wound of the fireplace, the old metal (saved from the wreckage early on) blackened and scarred from centuries of countless fires.

“I know,” he simply replied, drawing closer, to stand beside Thorin. “I was finishing up when Bofur mentioned it to me.”

Thorin nodded, and they lapsed into a comfortable enough silence for a moment or two, whilst Bilbo waited to see what the other man wanted.

It took a few moments, but eventually Thorin spoke again.

“I- the books have arrived.”

Bilbo nodded, casting his eye at the huge crates that took up most of the centre of the room. He had not even thought to begin unpacking them: filling shelves and decorating surfaces would be the very last of the tasks that needed to be completed.

“Do you know where things are going to go?”

Bilbo blinked.

“Around the house, you mean?”

Thorin shook his head, still looking at the great, tall shelves.

“I meant the books.”

Bilbo’s mouth opened a moment, oddly surprised. He had not associated Thorin Durin with a great love of reading, but there was a longing in his eyes as he looked at those empty rows, a twitch to his hand that rested on those crates, as if he were desperate to prise them open and to see what was inside.

“I…” Bilbo trailed off. He had had a plan, an organisational system ready, one that he had used before. It was an old and successful formula, particularly considering that most people who owned such extensive and valuable libraries actually had very little interest in reading them, and preferred to flick through their crime novels and romances that they kept stashed in the bookshelves in their own, private bedrooms.

“I thought it was something we could work out together,” he said, with a small smile, growing a little as he watched some previously unnoticeable tension seep from Thorin’s furrowed brow. “If you’d like to do that, I mean. Otherwise I can do it myself, it isn’t a bother and it is nothing you should feel obligated to do, of course, I mean-”

“I’d love to,” Thorin interrupted, and though he still did not meet Bilbo’s eye his shoulders seemed to ease, just a little, and he moved a half-step closer to Bilbo.

The sun broke through the clouds outside for a while as they wandered along the shelves and spoke of Shakespeare and Chaucer; the sky was gold and red when they came to Poe and Austen, and had long set below the horizon when they finally parted ways, with last words on Dante and Wordsworth.

He fell asleep that night with warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with the blankets, or the whirring drip of the old radiators.

 

* * *

 

“What is it?”

Bard stared down at the fish, and shook his head.

The wind was colder that day than it had been any other, bringing with it the first true cutting feeling of winter. Bilbo persisted.

“I mean, I know it is a fish, but why is it here? And what the hell is it?”

It had appeared that morning, or at some point in the night; either way Bilbo had woken and opened his front door to the sight of it, its glassy eyes still clear, though already they were beginning to grow milky. Despite the cool air it was already developing an unpleasant, foetid smell about it, but Bilbo was loath to touch it, even though it had appeared on his own front door step, lying there as if it had every right to be.

He had asked the others if they had left it, of course, for some practical joke perhaps, though Bilbo wasn’t entirely sure if he was able to see the funny side in leaving a dead animal on a person’s front step, even if it was just a fish by a seaside cottage. It was strange, and uncomfortable.

He almost felt threatened.

But none of them had. In fact, they hadn't even shared the slightly guilty, knowing look of someone who knew something more than they were letting on - all of them seemed utterly baffled and a little upset at the news, and work that afternoon had gone slowly, every now and then a man casting a glance over his shoulder as if he could feel someone's eyes on his back. 

It was bad enough that even Bard had noticed when he had arrived that afternoon with the latest delivery of food supplies: he'd nodded Bilbo over after they were done unloaded and had prised it out of him, before making off for the steps up to the Chapel, to see for himself. 

“It’s a wolffish,” Bard said, his lip still curled at the sight of it. “You find ‘em round here, and further north, more so when the weather starts to get colder.”

It was an ugly thing, the fish; a mottled grey-blue with great, staring eyes that only seemed worse now they were growing dimmer.

A small, fanciful part of Bilbo thought that they might have been watching him.

“Who left it?” Bard asked, toeing it with his boot.

Bilbo shrugged. “No one will admit to it.”

“But someone must have.”

There was nothing to say to that; they remained silent until Bard, with a heavy sigh, picked it up by the fin and threw it over the cliff face.

The fish was gone, but Bilbo couldn’t shake the feeling of disquiet that had settled around him, not for the rest of the day.              

 

* * *

 

He was in the Chapel, but the windows were gone, the glass melted from the frames, leaving just the disembodied shapes that had once been in the stained glass: they seemed to glare at him, to challenge him, then almost to mock him.

The pews – when did they buy pews? They hadn’t furnished the Chapel yet, and these were old and scarred – cast long shadows around him, in odd directions.

The roar of the sea beat in his ears, louder than he could stand; he wanted to press his hands against the pounding in his head, the ache of some deep and formless headache, but he couldn't move.

But there was a whisper there too, and a nameless fear.

_Who are you?_

Someone was watching him.

He couldn’t get out.

_Come to me._

The doors to the Chapel were closed against him; but then he was in the graveyard, and there were footsteps behind him, and the gravestones were taller than they should have been, they weren’t broken any more as he knew they should have been, but still he reached for one; the stone was cold and slick under his fingertips, grazing against his skin.

_He took it from me._

There was a glimmer of something in the distance, but then it was the sea, the dark shine of it under the cold light of a moon that was too large and seemed to stare at him in anger, and then he was standing on the cliff face, and the ground was crumbling beneath his feet, like it had for Fili, like it had for him.

His head hurt, his chest hurt; something was pulling him.

_It’s here, still._

He was weightless, he was falling.

_In the dark._

The air hurt against his skin, but he was moving slowly; the rocks rose up to meet him not in some great rush but almost gently, like a lover opening up their arms for an embrace.

_In the cold._

A chasm, the cold of the sea, the darkness of some unexplored cave that ran deep into the Rock, and he didn’t know what was in there, and he didn’t want to find out, but he was going closer, moving into the shadows, and for a moment he felt like he could see a shadow in the dark, a face, open in a wordless scream.

_Find me._

But then he was being torn away, and though he scrambled against the rock he gained no purchase: his skin ripped under his grip but the blood was cool and only made the sea-damp stone slicker; he was torn from the cave and into the cold of the sea before he could protest.

_You don’t belong._

The sea was all around him, hands were dragging him down, the broken and twisted faces of drowned mariners all around him, laughing at him as the brought him into their clammy grasp.

His chest twisted in fear, but he could not bring himself to struggle.

He could see the moon through the slow surge of the water, an amorphous shape, wavering and bright.

The slick of seaweed dragged across his skin; there were hands at his throat and unspoken words.

_I’m in the dark._

He closed his eyes.

And I am, too.

_I’m in the cold._

The shadows built behind his eyes.

I don’t want to die here.

A silent exhale.

You didn’t, either, did you?

Then his eyes were open again, and there was air in his lungs, and he was outside Erebor House: though the cold of the autumn sea was still digging into his bones he felt dry again, and strangely aware. From behind one of the great windows in the Hall came the movement of the shadow, something watching him.

For a strange, brief moment, he thought that it might have been Thorin.

_Find me, or I’ll find you._

The laughter of children came to him on the breeze, the sound of a boy shrieking in some formless joy; two figures ran across the grass some way away from him, but they did not turn to look.

A woman, on the cliff edge, her dark hair flying out behind her as she stared out to the horizon, as she stared to the storm building above the sea.

The flicker of lighting, and no thunder came.

A man at a window, a man watching, a man with eyes that hurt and hands that felt warm even in this dream.

_He promised me._

The breath caught in Bilbo’s throat, then Erebor House was burning, and there was laughter again, but not the sound of children; the shadows flickered, but it wasn’t the same – a man came from the door, dark hair slicked back, cheekbones high and sharp.

He turned to look at Bilbo, but then he was gone.

_He betrayed me._

And then he was back in the graveyard, and only one stone was broken, the name long worn away by the endless force of time.

_He **hurt** me._

Bilbo woke in a sweat, swallowing hard against the thick brine of the air. The nightmare was already disappearing into shapeless forms and the chill of memory; all he could recall was the cold and a strange loneliness, a loss of something great, and the feeling of being watched.

The whispers persisted even as he drifted back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Houses live and die: there is a time for building  
And a time for living and for generation  
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane


	6. Chapter 6

Thorin was less than impressed when the news of the wolffish filtered back to him; Bilbo had deliberately not told him anything, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. Every time he had run into Thorin over the next couple of days, which had been far more frequently than it had been when Thorin had first moved to the island, thoughts of the fish had simply slipped away from him, though the strange discomfort that the event had left did not.

It had made him feel threatened, though who it was threatening him he wasn’t sure; since then, too, the workmen had not shaken their disease, and remained quieter than they had done before. Even Bofur seemed less energetic, more prone to glancing over his shoulder and walking around the long shadows cast by the slope of the Rock.

Bifur too seemed more withdrawn: on more than one occasion Bilbo had come across him in the gardens, his hands trailing through the water collecting in the old stone fountains or plucking dead flower buds from the dog roses, his eyes far away, fixed on some distant point that Bilbo could not see and that Bifur himself could not articulate.

Things were not helped by his growing tiredness; as each day passed he seemed to sleep for longer and wake feeling even less rested than before. The days were growing darker, each afternoon seeming to grow shorter than the last, until soon he was waking and returning to his cottage in the pitch black, the wind howling through the window frames and the dull light of the yet-to-dawn sun a poor comfort as he locked the cottage door behind him (a new feature, that – he hadn’t bothered before, trusting the small number of workmen and the isolation of the island to keep his possessions safe).

The shadows under his eyes were worse with each passing week, and he could have sworn that he was growing paler, too, though the glass above his bathroom sink was cracked and warped (had it always been that way? Since he had first moved in, back in the summer? Had he really only just noticed?) so it was difficult to really tell.

The water from his tap tasted like copper and salt in his mouth, and left him feeling ill.

Who had told Thorin about the wolffish Bilbo had not discovered, but he brought it up as soon as he heard, when he came across Bilbo in the gardens. He had been distracted as he walked through, on his way back from a meeting, by a statue that he had walked past several times before, but seemed different now, though he couldn’t place why.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Thorin told him, after he’d brought up the topic without any preliminaries, and had asked Bilbo if it was true. There was a note of some strange and cold anger in his voice, something dark and almost startling in his intensity, that Bilbo had not expected. “That shouldn’t have happened to you, not here, not in my home.”

Bilbo had just shrugged, and clenched his hands in fists at his side, to stop himself from reaching out and touching that marble statue.

“Why…” Bilbo trailed off, suddenly unsure if it was his place to ask this question or not; he might have left it, but Thorin was looking at him questioningly, gesturing for him to continue, and there was an openness in his eyes and perhaps something that Bilbo might dare to label fondness, though he did not want to admit as to why the thought of _that_  cut through his tiredness, made the lead weight of his own body feel like lighter a load.

“Why did you come back here?” Bilbo asked, though it wasn’t quite what he had been intending to say.

 _Why are you so determined to make this spit of land your home?_ might have been closer; _what is it about this place that drags you Durins back each time?_  but he couldn’t bring himself to phrase it that way, to push the boundary of their tenuous friendship.

Thorin looked down at his hands, and Bilbo found himself following that gaze, to the long, lean lines of his fingers, the broad span of his palm, his life line etched deep across his skin.

“We moved from the Rock over a century ago,” he said, quietly. “For one reason or another, and we never came back. It fell into ruin, and sometimes I wonder if that was the best thing for it.”

A little way out to sea, Bilbo saw the silver-slick back of a porpoise break from the waves for a moment, before disappearing again.

“My Grandfather fought in both World Wars, did you know that?” Bilbo actually did; he’d been researching the family since before he’d even met Thorin, but he didn’t say anything.

“Apparently he was never the same after the First, quieter, and angrier, but then he was in a prisoner of war camp towards the end of the Second and when he came back he didn’t want to speak to anyone: not his wife, not his son. He moved out to the Rock when I was young and he couldn’t stand company any more. My father left when my own mother died, and joined him. The two of them lived here, then, until they died.”

He paused, and then ran a hand through his hair.

"I was only twenty when my father left," he said, his voice even quieter than it had been before. "And Dis was fifteen. Our brother died a year later, then it was just the two of us."

He trailed off, and for a moment Bilbo was sure that he wasn’t going to continue.

When he did his voice was a little calmer than it had been.

“I have lived my life away from the Rock; I’ve grown half-way to being old barely even considering the fact that I have a title. I fought alongside men from all backgrounds, and built up a business myself. We might have been privileged once, but I’ve had to work for everything I’ve got; all that was given to me was title that people are more likely to slam the door against than open it, and this rock out in the middle of nowhere.”

Bilbo nodded, and then reached for Thorin’s wrist, the pale skin peering from the dark cuff of his woollen coat; his skin was cooler than he expected, but not cold; there was a warmth there still, like deep in the earth after you’ve broken through the skin of frost to garden on a winter morning. The heat lingers even as the world around it dies, a promise and a potential for something new and green come the thaw: so too was Thorin’s skin, chilled by the winter wind but with the promise of warmth, should he spend just a little time curled in front of a fire.

Thorin didn’t move his hand away; he didn’t even flinch when Bilbo’s fingertips grazed across his pulse.

“They threw their lives away on ruined walls and strange dreams; by the end my father told me that he _couldn’t_ leave, he kept talking about nightmares whenever he managed to pick up the phone when I called, and that he and Grandfather were searching for something.”

Thorin’s hand tightened into a fist.

“They cared more for this rock than they did for their own family, more for their treasure hunt than for us.”

Bilbo wanted to ask more about that, memories of his conversation with Bard rising in his head, but pushed back his curiosity: Thorin was staring up at the statue in front of them, the rise of the garden on either side of them seeming to enclose them, so that it felt as if they were in their own, private world.

“And over time,” Thorin continued, after a moment, “I suppose I started to think that if they were willing to sacrifice everything for this place, then maybe it was worth making it what it had once been. For them, in a way, but for us, as well.”

His father and grandfather gave everything to the Rock, Bilbo realised, as the frown between Thorin’s eyes deepened. And, perhaps, Thorin believes that if he can rebuild it for him and his sister, then he could feel like the Rock had done more than simply take from them.

Thorin moved away, then, but before he did his hand moved, just a little, so Bilbo’s fingers skimmed down into the palm of Thorin’s hand; the taller man squeezed them, just lightly, just once, before letting go.

 

* * *

                                                   

The curiosity that had risen during that strange, brief conversation would not rest, and when, several days later, Balin came back to the island, Bilbo found himself turning the conversation in the direction of the history of the Rock, as best as he could. The pair of them had taken a moment to sit, with a cup of tea, in the recently furnished sun room, though that label felt a little incorrect as the slate-grey sky stretched out before them, out over the sea, which was rough and choppy that day.

“Why did they live out here, the last two Lords?”

Balin had sighed, and rubbed a hand through his white hair.

“It’s a long story, lad. Neither of them were quite right in the head by the end, you know? And moving out here did them no good. By the end my Dad tells me they were determined to stay until they found something.”

His eyes drifted from Bilbo to the window, and for a moment he looked much older than he had ever done before. Bilbo had almost felt a little guilty for pressing any further, but he could not bring himself to leave the story alone, not now it had slowly begun to unravel around him.

“What they were searching for?”

Balin leant back in his chair, away from him, almost unnoticeable and perhaps not consciously: he was clearly uncomfortable with the way that the conversation was going, and wanted to put as much space between it and him as possible.

“Well, that’s a good question, lad,” he replied, a note of hesitance about his tone. “And I don’t have one answer for you, I’m afraid. They never truly explained it, didn’t seem to feel the need, but I knew it had something to do with a theft, some years back.”

Bilbo’s head turned on one side, his eyes dragging along the line of the cliff.

“What kind of theft?”

Balin shrugged.

“All I know is that it happened not long after Erebor House was built – and I only know that because of the old superstitions around the village.”

Ah, the fears and dreams of local men, apt to swell over time and creep slowly into so-called knowledge as time passed. How many stories like these had Bilbo come across, restoring old houses? How many hauntings had he had confessed to him, how many shades of long-dead aristocrats were supposed to linger around the English countryside?

He had always laughed them off, if he had ever even bothered to consider them at all, and yet there was something about Erebor House that caught the amused noise in his throat now, something in the low ache of exhaustion that had settled around him that stopped him from even smiling.

“Superstitions?” he asked, and continued, even though he felt he already knew the answer to his question. “Like that the House is haunted?”

Balin nodded.

“That kind of thing, yeah.” He shot a weak smile in Bilbo’s direction; it did not reach his eyes. “Bit ridiculous, really, isn’t it?”

Bilbo didn’t answer that; he wasn’t sure if there was anything he could say.

“So was something stolen by the Durin family, or was something stolen from them?”

Balin sighed, and sipped the last of his tea, already cool in the china cups.

“I’m not all that sure, to be honest with you – I’d have come to you to ask, knowing that you’re doing the research on the family, but I suppose a lot of these stories are all a little buried. Maybe try asking Ori about it?”

 

* * *

 

“Bilbo!”

He span on his heel in the early morning air, suddenly disconcerted: he had been walking to the House, but had decided to go through the gardens – why had he decided to go that way? It took twice as long – and now all of a sudden he wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there, the cold of the stone and the moss soaking through the soles of his shoes leaving him chilled.

It was Fili, holding on to his Uncle’s hand; he looked oddly startled by his own words, as if he had not even meant to call out to Bilbo, but he offered a small, shy smile none the less.

Thorin was frowning at him.

“What are you doing down here so early?”

Bilbo shook his head.

“I was just walking up to the House, I got distracted looking at the-” he gestured up at the statue in front of him, faceless and tall, the white stone long discoloured by time and lichen. Thorin glanced up at it, and his frown deepened.

“You shouldn’t stand out here in the cold so long,” he said, quietly.

Bilbo suddenly remembered their last conversation here, when Bilbo had again been caught up looking up at this particular carving. A faint flush began at the base of his throat, suddenly warm against his cool skin, as he recalled the feeling of his fingers against Thorin’s palm, that brief and unexpected point of contact, that light touch that had left his chest tight and his mind distracted for hours afterwards.

Thorin was watching him; he repressed the shudder that tried to work its way up his spine.

“What are the pair of you doing down here?” he said, glancing around them. “And where is Kili?”

The corner of Thorin’s mouth quirked, just a little.

“Still asleep – he’s been very tired, recently. And we came down to talk to Bifur. Have you seen him?”

Bilbo glanced at his watch, only to find that it had stopped, the hands frozen at some point around three the previous morning.

“I’ve not,” he replied, taking a half step closer to the other two, away from the statue and the dark moss of the terrace wall. “But he’ll be around here somewhere. What do you need him for?”

Thorin glanced down at Fili, but the young boy didn’t reply: he was staring up at the sky, distracted by a bird winging overhead.

“Fili wanted to know if we could grow blackberries somewhere, next year,” he admitted. There was a strange defensiveness in his tone; since Fili had started talking again, his mother and Uncle had taken everything he happened to mention quite to heart, as if believing that by encouraging whatever topic the boy brought up would further bring him back into their lives, would keep him from slipping back into that disquieting silence.

Bilbo nodded.

“Well, he’s in charge of all this,” he said, gesturing around them. “But I don’t see why it would be a problem.” He smiled at Fili, who seemed to realise they were talking about him, and glanced back between the two adults. “Do you like blackberries, Fili?”

Fili nodded, and chewed at his lip for a moment.

“Dad liked them,” he replied, very quietly, before tugging at his Uncle’s hand again. “I’m going to find Kee,” he told him, before dropping the hand and darting away down the winding path again.

The pair of them watched him go, and as he disappeared around a corner Thorin rubbed at his forehead.

“They had blackberry brambles growing wild at the bottom of the garden, in their old house,” Thorin said, in a strange, quiet voice, as if he were talking more to himself than to Bilbo. “I want him to feel at home, here, too.”

Bilbo nodded, unsure whether or not to reply. But then Thorin sighed, and looked across at Bilbo again, and his eyes were warm, and open, and so suddenly different from the looks that he had given Bilbo before that it took the air from his chest, left him feeling a little lost.

“That’s the longest he’s been away from Kili in a long time, too,” he admitted, his voice a little happier now. “The change of scene is good for him, I think.”

Bilbo looked around them, at the faceless marble and the dank moss and the foetid smell of the earth, but he did not protest; Thorin looked too content, for just that moment, for him to argue.

Then he frowned again, a quick and sudden flicker across his expression.

“You’re cold,” he said, and Bilbo realised he was shivering.

“I suppose I stood here a little longer than I meant to,” he replied, and then Thorin was unwinding his long scarf from around his neck. He moved a step closer, in front of Bilbo, almost close enough that they could have touched, had just one of them moved, and wrapped it once, twice around Bilbo’s neck.

The wool was warm from Thorin’s skin, and scratched, just a little, enough to bring him back to his senses.

“Are you walking up to the house now?” he asked, and Bilbo nodded, quite unable to speak.

“Walk with me then?” Thorin asked, though it wasn’t much of a question. Bilbo might have been annoyed at the commanding tone of his voice, but there was a hint of some unspoken uncertainty in those eyes, still warmer than they had been before.

Bilbo nodded, and for a moment Thorin looked relieved.

They didn’t speak, as they walked up to the House, but when they parted ways Thorin’s hand brushed against his shoulder, just briefly, and he didn’t ask for his scarf back.  

 

* * *

 

Three days later, Ori came over to the Rock for the day, and it wasn’t long before Bilbo swerved the conversation back in the direction that his mind kept wandering to.

“Have you heard anything about this theft?”

Ori’s face turned to his startlingly sharply, and it was only then that Bilbo realised what his question had sounded like.

“No, not now, nothing’s gone missing, don’t worry. It’s just… Balin mentioned something about it to me the other day, something about some theft that happened years ago, at some point back in the history of the family?”

Ori’s eyebrows shot up in realisation; it was immediately obvious that he knew what Bilbo was referring to.

“Do you mean the thing about the necklace?”

Bilbo found himself leaning forwards in his chair in the recess in the library; Ori had come to double check the book order, which still hadn’t been unpacked; the long list that had come with the crates lay across his lap still, forgotten.

Bilbo didn’t want to admit that he had heard so many odds and ends, nor did he want to betray Bard’s confidence: instead he simply shrugged, off hand, in response to Ori’s questioning look.

“I… suppose? I think I might have heard something about that.”

Ori nodded.

“Well,” the young historian began, before biting his lip. “I mean, I’m not sure if it actually happened, or if it is just one of those stories, you know? Or perhaps a little bit of both? But you come across mentions of it, from time to time, from old letters and journals from around these parts. I wrote a paper on it, you know – the transmission of history into myth – not too long back.”

Bilbo nodded, trying to bite back the sudden flurry of impatience. “Yes, I remember you saying – so you wrote it on this story?”

Ori shook his head.

“Unfortunately not. I would have liked to, of course, but there wasn’t enough evidence to work on it at the time. But I looked into it a bit, out of interest.”

The wind whistled down the chimney breast, blowing a sudden cold draught across them; Bilbo huddled a little closer into his jumper, as the wind began to pick up a strange, echoing noise as it blew.

“And what was the story?”

“Well,” Ori began, tucking his hands into the cuffs of his over-large jumper and casting a quick, uncertain glance at the strange howl still echoing from the fireplace. “They say that one of the Lords met and fell in love with a young woman. Apparently she’d already been promised to another, but back then the Durin family held a lot of sway – good land, old money, strong prospects, you know? And he convinced her father to break off the engagement, and married her himself.”

Bilbo nodded. “Suppose that kind of thing happened fairly often, back then.”

Ori pulled a face in agreement. “More often than we’d like to admit.”

They fell into silence for a moment; a leaf blew against the windowpane for a moment, and they both watched as it stuck there, against the glass, for a moment, before the wind pulled it away again. Ori glanced down at his lap before continuing.

“You said that you’d read some of his letters, the ones that I found with her family, that had been kept up in an attic for years? He was madly in love with her, or that’s at least what it seems like in the letters, but apparently she never grew that fond of him or the Rock – she wasn’t suited to the cold weather and the rough life up here. This was the Lord that built the conservatory, apparently for her, so she could have a place to sit and watch the sky without feeling the cold and the rain.”

Bilbo nodded as Ori continued; he remembered the letters, and that part of the story – he’d written some of it up already, for the sign for the conservatory.

“Well, back then, the real gem in the family crown was this stone – no one really seems to agree what it was. Some people say it was a diamond, but if so it would have been unfathomably large. It might have been an opal, or any other kind of white gem. Either way, it was unique in its size and its quality.”

Now this was new to Bilbo; he’d never heard mention of this jewel before.

“Where did they get it?” he asked, and Ori shrugged.

“Who knows? It could have been from anywhere. He describes it in one letter, says something like it is the only one of its kind, that it had baffled collectors for years, and he promised to give it to her, as a gift, even though it was worth more than all their lands and bonds and titles.”

Bilbo’s mouth twisted a little. “But I’m guessing it still didn’t work out between them?”

Ori shook his head.

“Well, the necklace ended up getting stolen, apparently by her lover.”

Bilbo’s eyes widened.

“Seriously?”

Ori huffed a small, unamused laugh. “Well, that’s what the story says; he stole the Heart and she threw herself from the island in her grief, and the Lord went mad after losing her.”

Bilbo sat back in his chair.

“And the island has been dogged with misfortune ever since,” Ori finished, biting at his lower lip.

Bilbo thought for a moment, before something occurred to him.

“The Heart?”

“Oh,” Ori replied, blinking. “That’s what they called it, that stone – the Heart of the Rock.”

The Heart of the Rock, stolen and lost; a woman on the cliff face, a sorrow in the stone.

The next question came unbidden, and he wasn’t entirely sure where it had come from.

“And what was her name?”

Ori blinked again, and his forehead furrowed into a frown.

“I can’t remember her family name,” he said, after a long moment. “That’s awful of me, isn’t it? It’s slipped straight from my mind.”

Bilbo nodded; he could relate. Recently even simply things seemed to disappear from his mind, idle thoughts of the graveyard and the smell of the sea seeming to seep into him, refusing to let him consider any practical thought.

“Her first name, though, I remember that. Her name was Cora.”

 

* * *

 

He woke to the sea, sounding like a drum in his ears; something had brought him back from his deep and restless sleep, and he wasn’t sure what it is.

There was a low drip from somewhere in the cottage; a tap left on, or the boiler perhaps. It sounded strange and far away as Bilbo rose from his bed, and walked over to the window.

He was tired, so tired; winter was in his bones, now.

At first all he could see was the darkness outside, and he wondered what had prompted him to climb from the warmth of his sheets, but then his eyes began to adjust, and the shape of the gravestones began to appear, then the rise of the cliff, and the distant, thicker darkness of the sky.

It was overcast; there was no light from the stars or the moon, and none shining from Bilbo’s cottage; he glanced up the hill, but Erebor House was in darkness as well, no welcoming yellow-gold window shining out to break through the night.

What was he looking for?

His eyes cast from left to right, uncertain and unsure, but struck with the knowledge that there was _something out there_ that he was supposed to see, something beyond the dying tangle of the ivy that grew over the cottage and the desolation of the Rock in the dark.

There, a patch of shadows, darker than the others.

There, the distant bark of some lone seal.

There, the wind against the windowpane, blowing drops of sea water from the waves to obscure his view.

There, the ivy dancing.

The shadows were moving.

Were the shadows moving?

Behind him a bed, and the merciful embrace of sleep, and dreams that he would not remember in the morning; behind him comfort, and safety, and ignorance.

He did not move.

And then suddenly a figure among the gravestones, and for a moment he thought it was a woman though he did not know why; but the shoulders were too broad, the height too tall, and now the man looked up at him, his hair silver and white, bright in the darkness, and where was the light that must have been shining on him coming from? For there must have been a light, only a moment before it had been too dark to see anything, but now the man was quite clear to Bilbo, and oddly familiar, something about the curve of his jaw and the line of his nose that seemed to remind him of another, though his mind was too fogged with sleep and confusion to realise who.

The man caught his eye, only-

Only the man had no eyes, just dark and fathomless shadows.

He smiled at Bilbo, and nodded his head.

He was mouthing something, the flash of teeth in the night, more jagged than they should have been.

 _We failed,_ the man was saying, and the realisation hit Bilbo quite suddenly that he could hear those words, despite the distance and the window separating them, despite the roar of the sea and the bellow of the wind, despite the frantic pounding of his heart in his chest, suddenly afraid.

_It shouldn’t be their burden._

Was that another person breathing, in his room? It sounded like it, laboured and hoarse, but he could not tear himself away from the man among the graves, could not turn to check; something nearby was burning, he could smell the char of it in the air, but there was no fire to shed light on the still tableau below.

_We failed._

A pain flared in his chest, sharp and certain, and Bilbo’s hand pressed above his heart, as if to still it.

_Tell them we’re sorry._

And then the man disappeared: Bilbo stood at the window for quite some time, hoping that he might reappear, but he did not. The night returned to its unequivocal blackness that seemed to hide both everything and nothing, and there was no movement and no more voices, nothing other than the ivy in the wind and the creak of the cottage and the noise of the sea, duller now it seemed, as if it were trying to whisper to him.

_Tell them we loved them._

He did not remember leaving his vigil; he woke the next morning in his bed, disorientated and afraid, unsure of whether it had been a dream or not.

 

* * *

                Do not let me hear  
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,  
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,  
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lets try this again: this is the right chapter, this time - first section reads as the same, for anyone that managed to get on here before I realised my mistake and deleted it.

The tide of the year turned.

And with it, so did everything else.

The winds grew stronger; winter sunk itself into the rock of the island. Some days into November, and Bilbo woke to the sight of frost winding its way across his window in grotesque, dancing patterns, already weeping under the damp kiss of the sea air. It was gone by the time he had finished his morning coffee, but each morning it reappeared, and as the days passed, it lingered for longer.

The bitter taste of ice was in the air, the threat of snow just out of reach.

And things on the island grew suddenly and inexplicably worse.

Bilbo seemed to sleep for longer, though he felt ever more exhausted. He woke some mornings to find himself propped up in his armchair, or lying across his desk, though he was quite certain that he always fell asleep in his bed the nights before he did.

One day he woke to see footprints in the empty bed underneath his bedroom window.

Another morning he found scratched running down his arms, as if he had clawed at himself in the night, though he had not woken up from the pain.

 _A dream, a nightmare, just a dream, and nothing more,_ he told himself.

Gandalf called and he found himself replying automatically, barely listening to the other man’s instructions and answering him with the bare minimum to questions posed to him: he supposed that there was concern in the old man’s voice, but he could barely register it, his exhaustion seeming to strip all of his ability to even communicate with another person. Even the walk up to the House became a chore, lengthy and difficult; he could barely feel the cold rain against his face nor the chill of the wind some days.

The world around him seemed to grow greyer, the strange, stark beauty of the Rock lost to him now behind a wall of impenetrable tiredness.

It might have been more obvious to the others on the island, more of a concern to those around him, but they were little better. The workmen left the Rock one by one, and the work on Erebor House neared completion, and as the people thinned the remaining workmen grew more reserved, distant themselves or lit with some strange desperation.

Never before had he seen work done at such a pace by men who looked so tired.

“I need to get off this fucking island,” he heard one say, one late afternoon. “I need to go home.”

Home seemed like a long way away, right now.

The family were worse off than the workmen.

Dis, who had seemed to be finally stepping from beyond the veil of her grief, withdrew back behind it quite suddenly, became prone to slipping into queer silences; she seemed to manage to pull herself back when her sons or Bilbo tried to draw her out again, perhaps in that way the strongest of all of them, but as soon as conversation stilled you could see her eyes dimming as she sunk back into her memories.

He came upon her crying in the gardens one day, sat on the damp earth, her head in her hands.

He had sat beside her, and put his arm around her, but words refused to come to him, his mouth dry, consolation or comfort choked in his throat.

Kili did not shake the strange illness that seemed to have crept up on him; in fact, he only grew worse. He spent his days drifting silently behind Fili, or else curled up quietly on some sofa or his bed, Fili nearly always sat or lying next to him. Once, on a dry day slightly warmer than usual, Bilbo came across them curled up together on a stone bench, Fili humming quietly as he stroked his brother’s hair.

Gone were the days of bright laughter and games behind the stunted shrubs. The pair were sullen and pale.

Kili was not the only one; Bilbo found himself slipping into strange day-dreams, staring off into the distance, out to sea, until he would suddenly come back to the present, unsure of how much time had passed.

He avoided the gardens and the faceless statues.

He averted his eyes as he walked through the graveyard, the broken stones as jagged as teeth against the grim skyline.

The trees took on an eerie, dark colour under the constant damp chill, their branches reaching to a sky that they could never touch, a sky that hung heavy with the constant threat of sleeting rain, the weight of the winter weather.

Bard came less and less, and whenever he did he looked at Bilbo with a gaze of such hopeless remorse that he found himself barely able to look back at the man who he had considered a friend, not knowing what to do in the face of that expression.

“Leave with me,” Bard had said to him, just once, quietly, the roar of his boat echoing in the morning air.

Bilbo had pretended not to hear: as tired as he was, as hopeless as he felt, he knew that he could not leave this island, even if he had wanted to. There was work still to be done, he knew, some deep and aching part of himself very much aware that he was not talking about historical notes or the tour booklet or the signs for around the House.

But what he _was_ talking about, he just wasn’t sure.

Worst of all, at least to Bilbo, was Thorin.

Bilbo had been cautiously optimistic at their developing friendship; there had been times, as he lay his head upon his pillow and insistent flutters had made themselves known in his chest that he had wondered if perhaps it might become something more than that, though he had been quick to shoot those thoughts down, dangerous as they felt.

It wasn’t just that he was quiet, as Bilbo was, or that he was tired, like the rest of his family: Thorin seemed to withdraw entirely, not just from Bilbo, but from the rest of them as well. His nephews, once the centre of his attention, now needed to pull at his arm to make him notice them, and to his sister, whom he had always been affectionate and concerned towards, he now seemed indifferent.

Most days Bilbo might not have even been there for the attention he paid him.

What had changed, he did not know, nor could he fight through the fog of tiredness for long enough to try and work it out.

He remembered that moment, though, the moment he had come across this new Thorin for the first time, one morning, when the dew had been soaking the fabric of his trousers from the grass grown suddenly taller about the cliff face.

Thorin’s eyes had been on the sea and his hands at fists by his side as Bilbo had approached him, just a few days after he had told Bilbo about the blackberries, that close and tender moment: the shorter man had glanced uncomfortably at the proximity of the cliff, the memories of crumbling earth still fresh in his mind. The morning light had been dull; the wind had been strong that day, and the water choppy.

“Good morning,” he had said, though his shoulders had hung heavy and it had felt as if there were very little good about it at all.

The man had barely reacted; Bilbo had stared down at his shoes for a moment, grasping for something to say now he had stopped on his walk from the Chapel to the House, now that he had approached the man.

“Ah, I still have your scarf, by the way.”

Thorin’s face had tightened just slightly in a frown; Bilbo had wondered if he could reach out and touch his hand, but at the last moment stopped himself.

“Thank you, for that.”

Thorin glanced at him, then, his face had pulled into a frown.

“What?”

He had clearly barely been listening; his eyes turned back to the sea almost immediately.

“The… you leant me your scarf, last week. I’ve been meaning to return it.”

He had said nothing; a few moments later Bilbo left his side, a heavy weight settling in his chest.

That had been the start of it, but not the end. Now deep shadows were forming under the Lord’s eyes, his skin growing ever paler, and it was the suddenness of all this, such a sharp contrast over such a short period of time, that struck Bilbo, that made him feel so horribly helpless.

But at the same time, the ache of fatigue was in his bones, the weight of winter making it difficult to breathe, and some days he could barely think of anything but putting one foot in front of the other.

And he didn’t want to think of why the family’s distance hurt him so; it was better to dwell on his own hurt than to consider the other, than to let it make him feel even worse.

Whispers came, in his dreams, and now in his waking moment too.

_They were never yours to keep._

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you alright?” Bofur asked him one day, startling Bilbo out of his thoughts. 

The bright spark that had always been present in Bofur's eyes had seemed duller of late, he thought, as he glanced up at his friend. 

He just nodded in reply as Bofur reached to hang the last of the curtains.

The house was nearly complete, now: all the furniture was in, the decorating done, and the last of the soft furnishings had arrived the day before. Bofur wavered precariously on the top of a stepladder as Bilbo fluffed the pillows that went on the bed of this room, the last of the many period-accurate layers that went on it, eiderdowns and comforters tastefully patterned to match the rich burgundy of the walls of the bedroom that might never have an occupant: there were too many rooms in this House, and too few people living in it.

“Are you sure?”

No.

“I’m fine, Bofur,” Bilbo replied, but even he could tell that his heart was not in it.

Bofur turned his back to him, straightening out the fabric of the curtain as he balanced on top of a stepladder, seemingly perfectly content with his precarious position. 

“You can always leave, you know.”

He glanced at Bofur in surprise; there was a pain around his temples, and a sudden longing desperation to agree. 

But he shook his head. 

“C’mon, Bilbo,” his friend said, his voice quieter now. “We’re all leaving by the end of the week. It’ll just be you and the family on here. You don’t need to be. You can come with us.”

But Bilbo just shook his head once more; the resolve clung to him still, and it did not abate even when he watched the last of the workmen leave, both Bard and Bofur casting one last, strange look back over their shoulder, gentling in both their eyes when they turned to Bilbo, changing with some strange cadence of regret.

 

* * *

 

It was Fili who found it, the secret compartment.

So much of the House had been destroyed, so many walls wasted by fire and the merciless attack of the sea, but it seemed there were still secrets hidden in the stone. There was a strange, fanciful part of Bilbo that believed that it must have been waiting for a member of the family to uncover it, and though he knew that was a ridiculous feeling, he couldn't shake the thought that perhaps it should not be him, as he reached inside to pull the box that was hidden within it.

It was behind the fireplace in the library: apparently Kili had dozed off on one of the long window seats and his brother, unwilling to leave the room but needing some distraction, had been exploring the room when he had stumbled trying to reach for a book and had bumped into the chimney breast. How none of the builders had come across the compartment Bilbo was not sure, but a section of the original stonework of the mantelpiece had slid back with some ingenious trick that he could not quite get his head around, and had revealed a small cubby hole.

Fili had not been quite as excited by the discovery as Bilbo had been: it had been the first thing in days that had actually managed to waken him from the stupor that had settled around him, the first thing to make him feel really _enthusiastic_ about this project.

But Fili had just stared into the cubby hole, disquiet dancing through his grave eyes, as if he knew something about it that Bilbo did not.

It would make for quite a story, a good anecdote for the informational placards for the room: a secret compartment, containing papers from before the fire, from before the Rock had been abandoned for the first time, preserved startlingly well, no doubt from the dry air from the heat of the fireplace and the box they had been protected by. A treasure trove for any historian.

The box was inlaid with what looked like mother of pearl: it was about as wide as Bilbo’s hand-span, and just a touch longer, almost the exact size of the cubby that it was pulled from, as if it had been made especially to fit.

Even Thorin seemed to have broken through his recent stupor and had joined them by the time Bilbo returned, having left to find himself protective gloves, to stop the oils from his hands from damaging the wood and paper further.

“What do you think is inside?” Dis asked, as he slowly eased the lid from the box.

Bilbo shrugged. “Probably nothing exciting.”

But he had been wrong: he had brought first a thin notebook, delicate gold leaf decorating the vellum cover from the box, where it had been resting on top. Underneath was a strange array of things, the kind of items that a young woman might treasure but that would not make particular sense to any other. There was a scrap of silk, stained as if it had once been dabbed with a fragrant oil, and a long hair ribbon, its colour faded and its edges ragged. There were the stubs of theatre tickets and an etching of a manor house surrounded by rolling hills, idyllic and very different to anything built on the Rock; there was a small leather horse, the kind a child might have carried around with them, and a sketch of a man’s face, with angular features and a small, dangerous smile, its edges worn as if it had been touched often.

“Who do you think that is?” Bilbo asked, more to himself than to anyone else as he studied the quirk to the man’s eyebrows, the dark shade of his hair, the suggestion of teeth in his smile; Dis made a low, confused noise as she sank into the chair next to him, leaning over the table to look at the contents more closely. Fili and Kili too peered over, their disquiet somewhat subdued perhaps by the mystery, and even Thorin moved a step closer, though his eyes were narrowed and there was a hard line to his mouth that Bilbo did not quite understand.

It was to the book that he turned next though, carefully pulling back the cover to reveal a printed front page.

 _Cora Durin, 1756,_ it read.

Bilbo swallowed reflexively, and turned the page again.

The words were written in a neat – if a little cramped – hand, the ink faded, but not beyond legibility: Kili made a noise of discontent when he realised that he could not read the cursive writing, and slumped a little closer to his brother.

But Fili was frowning at the notebook as if he thought it might be some snake in the grass, some viper ready to bite, though Bilbo was too engrossed in reading to notice.

_These are my first words in this book, and I am afraid that they are not very happy ones, for all that it was a beautiful gift from a beloved sister. She bought me it when my husband bought me from my father: now I am far from her and from my mother and all I have ever known, and I find that it is a comfort to me._

“It’s her diary,” he breathed out, the hair on the back of his neck prickling as the discomforting thought; the words on these pages were penned by a person long dead, but remained, a strange ghost of the past.

He skimmed the pages, turning them slowly but steadily: he would go back and read this properly in time, transcribe the words and send a copy to both Ori and Gandalf, but there was an itching in his fingers that prompted him to hurry now, to read the entire thing.

_I fear that I shall never come to love this island like I do my own home. He has put a statue of me in the gardens, he builds me grottos and gives me enough jewellery that I feel as heavy as the sea air, but this is not where I belong._

The corner of his own mouth twitched a little; that was a feeling he understood all too well.

_You are a fair companion, diary: your pages are the only place where I can truly be at ease._

“I think she was lonely,” Dis said, her voice almost a whisper: Bilbo jumped. He had almost forgotten that there were other people in the room, and certainly hadn’t realised that Dis was reading over his shoulder.

“Ori told me the story about her,” he replied, but his eyes were already back on the paper.

_I fear that I will end up trapped here, diary, trapped by a love I cannot reciprocate and by a father who cared more for his coffers than he did for his daughter._

“Aye,” Dis answered. “I’ve heard that one, too. She took a lover and then threw herself from the cliffs.”

“Or so the story goes,” Thorin said, his voice low and distant. The pair both broke their gaze from the pages and looked up at him, surprised by his sudden words, but he said no more.

After a moment Bilbo turned back to the diary, to the story of a young woman married to an older man and sent away to a cold and desolate place, far from her family: he was a distant husband despite his apparent love by the sound of what she wrote, often away or locked in his study when he wasn’t, leaving her to her own loneliness. She distracted herself with arranging flowers and dreaming up silly stories, playing idle tunes on the piano, writing down her hopes in this diary.

And then, it seemed, by something else.

_I have met a man, diary, a man like I have never known. He came to the winter ball my husband threw, though he was sore about hosting I played my pretty part until he agreed, and I was willing to do it, for this place needs life more than anything else. It was a masque, and his was red and gold scales, like some great monster, but he looked at me the way a man looks at a woman, and I was snared like the pretty dove I was disguised as._

“What does that mean?” Kili asked, his voice slow and tired, and it was only then that Bilbo realised that he had been muttering the words out loud as he had been reading.

“She fell in love,” Dis replied, and Kili’s head turned slightly to one side, resting against his brother’s shoulder.

“Like you did with Dad?”

There was a wry twist to the corner of Dis’ mouth as she nodded in reply.

_He is beautiful, diary._

It was strange, Bilbo thought as he turned page after page, something tightening in his chest. There was a deep and uncomfortable sense of invasion about what he was doing, reading these words that had never been meant for anyone else, but there was an urgency to it as well that he could neither place nor understand, some unspoken need to read this woman’s story after hearing so many broken fragments of it.

_His hair is dark as smoke, his eyes burn like fire. I have never loved another like him, and never shall I again._

Her writing grew more slanted, more angular, as if her passion had poured from her, altering her previous hand, which had been controlled and neat; Bilbo found himself swallowing as he came across a name, written in large letters, over and over again, taking up the whole line of a page.

_Draco. Draco. Draco. Draco._

A dangerous love, Bilbo thought to himself. An obsessive love.

_Everything that I have is his, and I shall prove my love to him as my husband tried to prove his to me. He’ll take me away from this Rock and this cold, he has promised to take me out of the country and to the south, where no one will know us and we can be together._

A sweet girl, and innocent girl; Bilbo leafed through the pages with a growing sense of disquiet, already knowing the end to this particular tale.

_I just want to be happy_

You poor thing.

_His teeth are sharp against my throat, and his hair is bright under the flickering light. His fingertips are hot against my skin, and I love him so._

Bilbo felt suddenly warm as the thought came, unbidden, of how Thorin’s skin had felt when he had touched his hand; he glanced up, despite himself, only to find that Thorin was staring out of the window again, his face pulled into a frown, his eyes dark. The winter light was harsh against his face, throwing the planes of his cheekbones into stark and sudden relief.

_Everything for him._

Bilbo forced himself to focus on the diary again, his concentration having been suddenly broken.

He was well over half way through the pages of the slim book now, and then he came across a torn page, another left blank but for ink stains; he thought he might have reached the end, but then there was another, written in a mess, the words flowing across the lines as if written in a panic.

_I cannot write for heartbreak, I have lost it all, diary. He was but a shadow and a lie. He never loved me, and now my husband knows, and I am afraid. He took the necklace and I think my husband would have forgiven anything but that, anything but stealing away the Heart of his beloved island, for he says he loves me but he has always loved this damned Rock more than I._

He read that passage out loud deliberately, hearing Dis sit back in her chair with a sigh as the story reached its conclusion, but his eyes turned once more to Thorin, and the way his hands tightened into fists at his side at Cora’s words, spoken though Bilbo’s mouth all these years later.

_He killed him, diary, but my lover had the last laugh on both of us, for he has left me to suffer my husband’s rage and he has hid the stone away somewhere. My husband will tear this island apart to find it again. There are bloodstains on the walls and he has not left his study in hours, though there is the constant sound of pacing, of glass hitting the walls. I fear I must write what has happened before he kills me too._

Bilbo’s eyes were wider now, and he felt his heart pick up as he paid proper attention to this entire section, reading every word. Ori’s story had been brief, skipping over this part, but it had not given this impression at all.

_I shall hide you in the cubby I had the mason cut into the new fireplace in the library the last time my husband was in London, the one where I keep Draco's portrait. He doesn’t know about it, or at least, I don’t think he does. That way, should anything happen to me, one day someone might find this and know what truly happened here._

_But you must understand, diary, that I loved Draco with all my heart, for all that he was a liar and a thief, and without him I have nothing, just dreams of hot, southern shores that will never be realised now. Like a serpent he found the Rock and set his eyes upon my jewel, like some dragon he has lit the life I had on fire and now I must burn for his sins. And my own._

_But if I could just find the necklace, I might be able to talk my husband around._

_Wish me luck, my gentle friend: this might be the last thing I ever write inside the comfort of your pages._

The pages after that were blank and yellowed, kissed by the passage of time. Bilbo closed the diary quite gently, sitting back in his chair.

“And I suppose she never did,” he said, his voice quiet. “Ori said she killed herself, you know.”

Dis bit her lip.

“Or perhaps that was just what he husband told everyone.”

Bilbo nodded, his forehead pulling into a frown, and it was only when he looked up that he realised that Thorin had left the room.

 

* * *

 

 

            There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,  
No end to the withering of withered flowers,  
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,  
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,  
The bone's prayer to Death its God.


	8. Chapter 8

Ori’s voice down the phone was crackling with static, but it was not enough to disguise his delight and enthusiasm.

“I cannot believe you found her diary!  _You found her diary!_ ”

Bilbo’s face shifted into the ghost of a smile.

“It was Fili who found it, actually,” he replied, his voice quiet.

There was a pause, and then a strange whooshing sound, as if Ori had let out a deep breath.

“Of course,” he said, and now it was his voice that was odd. “It is funny how that sort of thing happens sometimes, isn’t it? History only appearing for the people that it belongs to.”

Bilbo frowned a little, wondering at how similar that comment was to what he himself had thought when they had first discovered the cubby hole.

“I suppose so,” he answered. “Ori, do you-”

But he was cut off by the dial tone: he glanced down at his phone, swearing quietly as he realised that he had lost all signal.

 

* * *

 

 

The sea seemed to grow darker; even the gulls finally forsook the island, huddling in the crevasses of the cliffs of the mainland rather than screeching overhead; afternoons seemed to pass in a constant state of almost-darkness, the heavy grey slate of the sky keeping all but the barest minimum of the daylight at bay.

The island was silent but for the roar of the wind and the waves, and all the more desolate for it; only the occasional, distant bark of a lone seal or the tapping of the ivy against the window glass broke through the disquieting background noise of the weather.

Bilbo spent most of his afternoons sat at his desk, now, working through the various half-drafts of information plates and sections of the guide book. The boys no longer played on the headland or in the gardens; there was an echoing emptiness to the island now that there was not the steady drumbeat of workmen’s feet marching up the hill to the tune of their own desire to leave.

He slept often, and poorly, and woke with the disquieting feeling of lingering dreams that he could not remember.

Some days he forced himself from the cottage and walked through the gardens, simply for fresh air: occasionally he might see Thorin in there, though he was never called over, and nor did he approach the other man.

But then one afternoon he stumbled upon him quite accidentally, by the entrance to the grotto. There was a fountain there, the stone of it weathered, its patterns less defined now than they had been when Bilbo was arrived, he was sure of it, though he knew in his head that that did not make sense.

Thorin seemed to barely register his presence until Bilbo stumbled, half-surprised at the sight of him; Thorin’s eyes darted up to him then, though they barely registered any surprise at seeing him.

“It’s getting colder,” Bilbo said, absentmindedly, barely aware of his words: he was caught in the cool blue of those eyes, quite lost for a moment at the emptiness of them, at the way that they had become unfamiliar to him now. Thorin just nodded, once, and then his finger tips were tracing the brown petals of a flower that had fallen in the empty dish of the fountain.

It disintegrated under his touch, somehow dry enough to fall apart despite all the recent rain, which should have dissolved it into nothing more than the same thick, foetid sludge that littered the rest of the earth in the garden now.

“Mortem moratur,” Thorin mumbled; it took Bilbo a long moment to remember to breathe.

“Doesn't it?” Bilbo said, and then he stepped away between the trees, leaving the Lord to his strange thoughts.

 

* * *

 

 

“And you’re quite sure that you are alright?” Gandalf asked.

Bilbo nodded, before realising that the older man was not able to see him.

“Just fine,” he answered. “Everything is moving along perfectly well, no problems.”

The roar of the static seemed almost like the sea; he was distracted enough by it that he almost missed what Gandalf said next.

“-wasn’t really asking about the House, dear boy.”

Bilbo made a noise that might have been a laugh, but probably wasn’t; they remained in silence for a long moment.

“You don’t have to stay up there for the rest of the winter,” Gandalf said, quite suddenly. “It’s a lot to ask of you, I know. If you need to come home, no one will think less of you.”

Bilbo was a little startled by this; for all that he knew his boss cared for him deeply, he had never been the sort to believe in cutting corners, in pulling out of a job before it was done. He knew that he could have finished the work at home, in the comfort of his own office, with his cat curled up on his lap, but there was something uncomfortable about that thought: he didn’t want to bring thoughts of the Rock into his own life.

The island belonged up here, set against the grey sea and the tumultuous sea: its history felt out of place imagined anywhere else. He found that he almost _needed_  the distant roar of the sea to think about it, needed the chill creeping into his bones to get down on paper the story of the House and its previous inhabitants.

The Rock was more than just a jut of stone in the sea, he was beginning to realise now. It was more than the waves and the open sky and the shadows of its buildings and the strange statues in the garden, more than architecture and an interesting story. The Rock was an entity in itself: it lived and breathed in the brine as much as Bilbo did. Its heart beat to the steady pulse of time and the tides. It tasted of salt and decay and things living in a way that did not quite equate to _life;_ building and rebuilding could not change what it had and always been.

“No,” he replied, after another long moment of silence. “Thank you, but no. I… I think I need to be here. I think I need to see this done.”

Gandalf did not protest, but there was a note of concern in his goodbyes that stayed with Bilbo for quite some time

 

* * *

 

 

It was a chilly day in November when Dis came knocking at his door, the first time he could remember any of the family actively seeking him out, rather than the other way around, and even then she seemed to have very little to say: she sat in the uncomfortable armchair in front of the fire, whose warm did little against the cool stone of the walls and the flagged floor in the still unhomely living room, as he pottered about the adjoining kitchen making them both tea.

“Is everything alright?” He asked as he took a seat opposite her, holding the cup in both hands.

The heat of the freshly boiled water sank through the china and his skin, almost hot enough to burn, but he did not loosen his grip. There was a strange comfort to that pain, an odd sense of being _alive_ that came from it, and he was loathe to lose it again, for all that his hands might be dry and sore for hours afterwards.

Dis nodded, and said nothing; she stared instead into her cup, her dark hair loose about her shoulders, falling around the strong features of her face in long, thick tendrils, almost as if they were wet, though it would have been foolish to leave the house with damp hair in this cold, and it had not been raining that day.

“And the house? No problems?”

Bilbo had been a little afraid of winter leaks: the first cold season was often the test of a recently restored house, the time most likely for any problem to appear, be it a pipe not properly sealed or a roof slate not quite in place. But Dis shook her head, glancing up at him with those bright, blue-grey Durin eyes, still so striking even though he should have been long used to them, to the sharp contrast they formed with the shadows of dark hair and defined cheekbones.

The House was standing true and firm, it seemed, for all that its inhabitants were not.

“Is… How are you all?”

Dis smiled, but it was faint, and distant.

“Fine, I suppose.”

Bilbo bit his lip. Her voice was a little hoarse, as if she had not been using it that often, and she looked tired, as if she had not been getting enough sleep recently, though there were no workmen left to wake her up early and the dark, lonely nights were enough to make any one retire before they might otherwise have done.

“Are you sure?” he tried again, but even to himself he did not sound particularly comforting.

“Of course. We just… haven’t seen much of you recently. I suppose I wanted to see if you were doing well.”

Bilbo nodded.

“Ah, well. I’ve been a little busy, I suppose. It’s the awkward part of the job, where I have nothing to oversee or to organise apart from my notes.”

Her head turned slightly to one side.

“Notes?”

Bilbo nodded again, and took a mouthful of his tea, scalding against his mouth; he burnt his tongue, and probably would not have been able to taste anything he ate for the rest of the day, but since he had recently begun to forget to eat regularly, he supposed that it would not matter particularly.

“I’m writing up all the signs and displays for the House and the island, for the tourists, you know. So the details of each restored room, overviews of the different wings of the House and the other buildings on the Rock, the history of the gardens and the island in general; summaries of the family history, that sort of thing.”

Her forehead pulled into a brief frown, for just a moment.

“Is that so?”

Bilbo made a low noise of agreement.

“Could I… could I see?”

His shoulders slumped for a moment in relief: she was looking at him properly now, seemingly drawn from her dark mood, and he quite happily went and collected the completed sections, ready to be sent away to be properly printed. They drank their tea in silence as she leafed through them, her frown gradually deepening.

“It’s strange,” she said after a long while, when the tea was finished and Bilbo had cleared the cups away. “There is just so much of the history of this House that I don’t know.”

Bilbo’s lips pressed together, hard, for a moment.

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said, eventually, as she placed the papers on the coffee table. “To fill in the blanks.”

The smile that she shot him was faint, and a little strange, as if she was thinking of something he did not quite understand.

He walked her back to the House, though it was only a few minutes away and there was hardly any danger to the walk – at least, not any rational danger. They paused outside the House for moment as they arrived, and she glanced up at the dark windows, gaping above them like great, open mouths, ready to devour.

Dis’ hands drifted over the thorns of the rose bush, its flowers long gone.

The front door to Erebor House loomed above them.

It was threatening to rain.

“The boys?” Bilbo asked, looking for any sign of life beyond that empty glass.

“They were asleep when I left,” she replied, quietly. “They sleep so much, these days.”

Bilbo nodded, unsure what to say in reply.

“And Thorin?”

The corner of Dis’ mouth quirked in some wry, unhappy way.

“He’s… I don’t know.”

She sounded as lost, perhaps, as Bilbo felt. There was a flicker behind the library window, as if there had been some quick movement, but though he strained his eyes he could see nothing there.

Dis sighed, beside him.

“This… does this place feel strange to you, sometimes?”

Bilbo nodded.

“It’s waiting for something,” came a quiet voice from behind them both; they turned quickly to see Fili, one hand on the open door, his eyes grave and grey.

He disappeared back into the shadows of the House before Bilbo could say anything.

He glanced at Dis in concern, but it seemed almost as if she hadn’t heard her son at all; she ran a hand through her hair.

“Come to dinner tonight, Bilbo,” she said, instead. “God knows we could all do with the company.”

 

* * *

 

 

Thorin’s strange distance was still set in place when he came to dinner that night, his eyes on the windows or in the open fireplace, a frown fixed to his face.

Kili had fallen asleep as they ate, leaning against his brother, and Thorin had been roused from his thoughts only long enough to carry his nephew to bed: Fili had trailed after them, though it was long before he would normally be put to bed, refusing to leave his brother for even a moment. There was a shadow about his eyes, some grey worry that sat wrong and too-heavy on the face of someone so young, and as the three of them passed through the door Dis ran her hands through her hair in distraction.

“We are poor company tonight,” she said, quietly. “You must forgive us. The nights grow longer, and we seem to grow more tired with them.”

Bilbo shook his head.

“I’ve not been sleeping well recently either,” he admitted, though he was loath to confess to anything that might be misinterpreted as weakness most of the time. “So I doubt my conversation was at its best, either.”

Dis sent him a wan smile, and then refilled their wine glasses before picking them both up, and gestured for Bilbo to follow her.

She led them to one of the smaller living rooms, cosier than the larger ones and designated long ago as one of their private rooms, which would not be open to the tour when the House was finally ready to welcome in the paying public. Bilbo had often thought what it would be like, to live in a place more museum than home, but it was not his place to comment on it: he settled down with his wine just as a distant peal of thunder sounded out, somewhere out at sea.

“There wasn’t a storm forecast,” Dis said, with a small frown, as Thorin re-entered the room, taking a position standing at the window.

“Bard says they can come in like that sometimes,” Bilbo replied, sipping a small mouthful of wine, rich and heady. “Without warning, from off the shore.”

They spoke in muted tones about neutral topics as the next hour wore on and the storm grew closer; as the thunder grew louder their conversation began to grow thinner and weaker, until the rain started, loud against the roof, no doubt close to torrential outside.

“Well,” said Dis, “Thorin’s bad mood seems to be affecting the weather.”

Bilbo laughed, though he hadn’t quite meant to; it rang false even in his ears.

“You shouldn’t walk back in this,” Thorin said, idly, the first words he had said in hours, as if startled from whatever thoughts were distracting him by the sudden bark of Bilbo’s laughter: he continued to stare out of the window though, and it was Dis who quirked something close to a smile in Bilbo’s direction.

“You’re like to get blown away, and you’ve already had one too many close encounters with the edge of the cliff for comfort.”

Bilbo smiled half-heartedly in her direction, but the thought put him too much in mind of the uncomfortable dreams that had been keeping his sleep restless and discomforting, for all that he was only ever able to remember odd fragments of them, here or there: they reappeared in his mind at odd moments, a sudden sensation of falling or the creep of cold fear up his spine suddenly washing over him as he stood around the garden, or wandered through Erebor House. For a moment he might remember the odd sight of creeping shadows, a gash in the cliff face, a certain and disquieting darkness that he was sure someone was waiting in; before they could form any coherent thought or memory they were gone, out of the grasp of his mind again, spinning somewhere past his recollection or memory, leaving him with just the odd sensation of a fear that he did not understand.

“It can’t be that bad,” he replied, just as a great flash of lightning lit the dim room, the roll of accompanying thunder following almost immediately after. As if in disagreement with him the wind seemed to turn, blowing a great gale at the windows of the room, the rain an unhappy hammering against the glass.

“It’s not that far,” he said again, as Dis raised her eyebrows at him, and indeed it wasn’t: a mere few minutes from the House to the Chapel, down a winding path.

“If there is one thing this old place has it is an abundance of rooms,” Dis replied, shaking her head a little. “And thanks to you they are all perfectly furnished and able to accommodate any number of unexpected guests.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Bilbo insisted, glancing at Thorin, who still stared into the darkness, though he had not quite meant to do so.

“You’ll make us feel better if you do,” she answered him, also looking across at her brother. “Both of us.”

Thorin made no indication that he had heard either of them, but neither did he protest, or say anything to the contrary: still a little hesitantly, Bilbo nodded in agreement, just in time for another howl of the wind.

Dis shivered at the sound, even though the roaring of the fire was doing just enough to keep the room warm.

“If you’re sure?”

“Of course,” she replied, and finally Thorin turned to them, and offered a curt nod.

Bilbo settled a little more comfortably into the armchair he had taken, missing the comforting heat of another body next to his: at home he would have been curled with his cat on a night like this, the comforting rumble of his rusty purrs enough to keep him cheered.

He had not stayed in Erebor House before, of course, but he knew it well enough by now that when Dis suggested a room for him later he padded away to it without guidance. It was strange, really, but there was something about the House that made him feel that gentle comfort of home, despite the arching ceilings and the lingering discomfort from his dreams.

He was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, wrapped up in a shirt that Dis had found for him to wear, oblivious to the storm still raging outside.

Bilbo was not sure how long he slept for: it might have been minutes or it could have been hours, but when he awoke suddenly some time later the storm seemed to have passed over them, leaving the House oddly quiet in its wake, and it was still dark as anything through the window, visible through the open curtains that he had quite forgotten to close in his exhaustion. But there was a noise that had woken him, he was sure of it: the light padding of footsteps outside his room, down the long corridor.

He lay in the dark for a moment and listened: the footsteps were moving quietly away, in the direction of the great windows that lay at the end of the hallway outside, facing the Chapel, and the graveyard, and the sea beyond.

Bilbo reached for his bedside lamp, but it did not switch on; he swore under his breath and pulled himself from the warmth of his bed into the cool night air, but the overhead light was not working either, despite the emergency generator that was supposed to come on automatically should the main electricity source (the main island generator being a little unreliable at the best of times, out here on the island) break down. He wondered if it was perhaps the boys, woken by some dream and searching for their mother or Uncle, afraid in the dark; it had not sounded like a pair of footsteps, but then the two of them could move very quietly when they wanted to, and he had been half asleep.

The ceilings seemed full of shadows when he opened the door to his room, writing and moving, another level of darkness to the House, some shade beyond black defying labelling: he averted his gaze and turned in the direction of the windows.

But there was no one there, and no other doors down this end of the corridor that the boys might have turned into: the window was a feature piece rather than functional, dramatic and impressive. He glanced out of it, not expecting to see anything, and for a moment his stomach seemed to twist as he saw a figure out in front of the House, a tall man standing in the darkness. But then his sudden and brief rush of panic averted as he realised that it was only Thorin, standing quite alone.

He waved at him, but Thorin did not see him; he stared down the pathway to the Chapel, half-turned away from the House so Bilbo could only just see the tight line of his jaw, his deep frown, the unhappy set to his mouth. He hesitated only a moment longer, before darting back to his room and pulling his trousers and boots back on. His coat was somewhere downstairs, but his jumper was to hand, and he pulled it roughly over his head as he hurried to the front doors.

“Thorin!” he hissed as he opened one, and slid through it. “What are you doing?”

But Thorin had moved from where he had been before, his distant figure further down the path to the Chapel now: Bilbo hovered on the front step for only a moment before hurrying after him, almost afraid to call the other man’s name aloud in the still night air.

The storm had definitely rolled away: though he could still see the odd flash of lightning far away over the mainland there was no sound of thunder, as if muffled by the wind, only there was none: the air felt sharp and unnervingly still, as if the island itself were taking some great, deep breath, awaiting something. His voice would have carried, but he could not bring himself to call even as he drew closer, some primal part of himself afraid of the darkness, afraid to stir what might be lingering in it.

Bilbo had never been a superstitious man, but the fear was sudden and chilled him, digging claws in down to his bones.

He had thought Thorin was heading to the Chapel, but he veered suddenly as the path met another, and began the steep descent into the first of the garden terraces. He had left the hall light on in the House, but the dim light it offered was no help down there, under the twisted boughs of the bare trees and the looming shape of the great, moss-covered boulders, only just visible in the dark.

The path was dangerous in the wet, the stones slick; even riskier in the dark, when one might put a foot wrong, and go falling down until some rock or trunk might break your fall.

Bilbo followed him.

He skidded near the end, finding himself almost running down the last couple of meters to stop himself tumbling entirely, and he kept his pace as he went past stone and shrub, the once-comforting sight of turned soil lost to shadows, and then suddenly he was upon Thorin, standing quite still before the faceless statue, his head turned slightly to one side.

“Thorin!” he said again, finally able to grasp hold of the other man’s arm: he was wearing his jeans and boots, but all he had on otherwise was a long-sleeved thin cotton t-shirt; the fabric was wet under Bilbo’s hand, even though it wasn’t raining. “What the hell are you doing?”

It took a long moment for Thorin to reply, and Bilbo had to repeat his name once more, pulling quite sharply on his arm to catch his attention. His face was wreathed in shadows as he stared away, into the garden, though what he was looking at Bilbo was unable to see.

“I… I thought I saw someone,” Thorin said, eventually, his voice distant. “From my bedroom window, I thought I saw… something.”

“A man?” Bilbo asked, his heartbeat suddenly still. Their voices were quiet, almost whispers, as if not to attract attention to themselves, though he didn’t know why. A louder voice might have broken the strange tension of the still night, the hand of fear that had not loosened its hold around his chest, but he still could not do it.

Thorin’s frown deepened a little.

“A man… but it could not have been he.”

“Who?” Bilbo asked, but Thorin just shook his head.

“A shadow,” he murmured, to himself not to Bilbo. “Some shade of someone long gone, watching the House. My mind playing tricks on me, and nothing more.”

“I thought I saw someone,” Bilbo admitted, and though he would not have dared admit such a thing in the daylight he found that he was not afraid to say so now; the still night felt right for secrets and dark things that dare not raise their heads under the grey clouds that made up the day. “A man, outside my bedroom window. He looked familiar.”

“You would not have known him,” Thorin answered, and he finally looked down at Bilbo, his face barely distinguishable in the dark. “I barely knew him, by the end, and now he is gone, and I cannot repair that.”

There was something heavy and almost painful in Bilbo’s throat.

He did not know what to say.

“Come on,” he said in the end, as gently as he could. “You must be freezing. Let’s get back to the House.”

But Thorin was not listening; he seemed to have heard something that Bilbo had not, for his head turned, away from him again, and at the moment of his movement a strong smell of seawater hit Bilbo, the brine thick enough to make his head reel, suddenly lightheaded.

Thorin’s shirt was wet; not just damp from rain that was not falling. Wet, as if he had been submerged.

The darkness seemed to grow.

He pulled ineffectually at Thorin’s arm again, but the muscles tensed under his touch, and he pulled himself from Bilbo’s grip.

“They went mad and then they died; they all went mad,” he muttered, as if to someone else, to some formless shape in the dark. “They all died, why did they all die?”

“I don’t know,” Bilbo replied, suddenly desperate. “Thorin, come  _on._ ”

But Thorin did not move, except to take a step further away from Bilbo

“You should not have come,” Thorin said, his voice strange and other, not the rich tone Bilbo was used to: it was thin and somehow weary, as if he did not even know who Bilbo was.

And then he turned and was gone, and Bilbo was left alone in the creeping darkness.

The breeze picked up, quite suddenly, damp and cold against his cheek.

He could not hear the sound of Thorin’s footsteps, nor the sound of his breath: the man was gone, he realised quite suddenly, and there would be nope of finding him in this strange labyrinth of a garden, among these fey rocks and broken statues, between the foetid earth and the skeletal branches. Oh, for summer nights, lit by warm stars, flowers bright under its silver light; oh, for the harvest moon in autumn, golden and large, and the red-orange of turning leaves lit by its shine. But this was winter and cold weather, and there was no light to guide him, no help to find the wandering Lord in the dark.

He is beyond my reach, Bilbo realised with a sudden clarity. There is something wrong with this island and now it has taken him, too, like it took his father and his grandfather and his strange, cold ancestors before him. But he cannot go far in body, even if he can in mind: he will go back to the House himself, or else they would find him by morning, disorientated and freezing, but alive – for there was some part of himself that knew quite certainly that the island was not done with Thorin Durin quite yet.

 _We will watch him_ , came whispers from the trees.

 _We love him so_ , came another.

But so do I, came a voice in Bilbo’s head, though it was only a shade of a thought, a brief moment of clarity that he cast away before he could even properly think on that, before the true weight of that could really sink into him.

The whispers grew louder.

_He is blood of our blood._

_Only our blood._

Bilbo made his way quickly back to his own cottage, his bones aching and head reeling from these strange, distant thoughts.  

 

* * *

 

 

And the ragged rock in the restless waters,  
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;  
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,  
In navigable weather it is always a seamark  
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season  
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.


	9. Chapter 9

 

Bilbo woke, some hours later, to the smell of fire.

It was an acrid, burning smell that caught in his throat in a way that was oddly reminiscent of the way that the brine of the sea did; but this was an entirely different feeling, though no less potent.

The air was cold against his skin as he pulled himself from his bed and padded to the window, his hands tightening around the sill with some urgency, as if he feared he might be carried away by some fey wind. He wondered for a moment how long he had slept for: it had been past midnight when he had returned to his empty cottage and had fallen into an uncomfortable, restless sleep, yet it was still dark outside, and not even that strange quality of grey-dark that comes before a long-awaited dawn: no, it was the incalculable, thick dark of the dead of night, lit neither by stars nor streetlights.

Oh, how he missed streetlights. He had never thought that he would, but he was struck with a sudden longing for the orange-yellow of the lights that lit his street, for even the stark white halogen of busy roads: anything to break through the night, anything to remind him that there was someone else out there, for right now he might have been the only person left alive in the world, stuck out here on an unforgiving rock, the breakers crashing around him and the gaping jaws of lone wolffish his only company.

But there, in the distance, a sudden trace of light, an entirely different quality to a torch or the moonlight; this was the flicker of fire, the thick grey smoke only just visible against the dark. Somewhere down in the garden a tree was burning, skeletal branches reaching up to the sky in hopes of some salvaging rain, but for once the night was dry, and the clouds did not break to save it.

He thought for a moment that he could even _hear_ the fire, but there was no reason that he would. Still, the echoing crack lingered in his mind, the sound of the fire eating through the damp layers of bark, and then the satisfied roar as it found the dry wood beneath.

The clock above his bed chimed, quietly; six am.

Bilbo hesitated a moment, and then opened his window wide open: the air was as frighteningly still as he had remembered, and then thick smoke billowed in, far stronger than it should have been, making his eyes sting.

The smoke should have dissipated over the island; the breeze from the sea should have sent it out across to the mainland, or out to the distant, invisible horizon. Instead it was building up on the Rock, as if it were trapped there.

_We’re all trapped here._

The boys. Dis.

Bilbo swallowed.

He didn’t know where Thorin was, where his family were; he didn’t know if they were safe, or why the trees were burning, or why the sun had not risen.

He didn’t know _anything._

And in that moment he felt his knees weaken in despair, as a wave of hopelessness crashed over him, leaving him cold.

How was he supposed to save them from this place when he didn’t even understand what was happening? All he knew was that there was some strange force on this barren tidal island, something he could not explain or rationalise away: he held the memory of Thorin’s half-smile in his mind, the distant echo of Fili and Kili laughing as they ate seed cake, the spark of life that briefly flickered in Dis’ eyes now and again, he held them close in his head as he slowly forced the hopelessness away and shut the window again.

He was just a little man, along way from home, surrounded by people that he barely knew yet knew that he _loved,_ inherently and implicitly.

And he didn’t know if they were safe.

There was something unhappy about this island, but before he could think about that, he had to think about the Durins.

 

* * *

 

He found Thorin in the gardens: he had rather suspected that he might, so he had gone there first, half-afraid that he might find that Thorin had thrown himself upon the fire at the whim of the strange moods that the island were inflicting on him, that he might find that the tree had become a pyre.

But he hadn’t: the light case by the fire cast peculiar, flickering shadows across Thorin’s face as he stood and watched the burning tree.

“What happened?” Bilbo asked, and wasn’t entirely surprised when he received no reply.

There was a strange blankness to Thorin’s face, an odd shade of distance, as if his mind were far away, in some far off place or remote time: his eyes were shadowed, and he was quite still but for the way he occasionally mumbled something, too quiet for Bilbo to hear.

He wondered, for an insane moment, what he could do to break through that barrier between Thorin and reality: if he slapped him across the face, would he respond? If he screamed in his ear, would he even move? If he took hold of him by the shoulders and kissed that strange and desolate mouth, kissed him as if he were pouring a part of himself into that cold and unresponsive body, might Thorin come back from wherever his mind was, might he return to Bilbo the man he had been before, the man of reserved laughter and eyes that flickered with warmth and happiness when he looked at his family and, occasionally, when he looked at Bilbo?

Might he lose those grave shadows across his face, might he wrap his arms around Bilbo’s shivering body and promise him that they would leave this place to its secrets and its pain and run away, somewhere warm and hopeful, where they might lie naked on a warm bed, with dappled sunshine falling through the window, where they could find out what it really means to _know_ someone, inside and out?

But Bilbo did nothing; he didn’t even reach to touch Thorin’s arm as he had once done, for all of a sudden he was too afraid to.

“He died here,” Thorin muttered, and only now Bilbo noticed that his hands were black with ash, with soot, as if he had been running his hands along the burning bark. “The man who stole it. He buried him under the tree and told no one.”

 _Then how do you know? Bilbo_ wanted to ask, but he restrained himself at the last moment. He had never been one to ask questions that he already knew the answer to: there was no reason that Thorin would have known that, but the island had told him nonetheless.

“I’m going to find your sister and your nephews,” he told Thorin, quietly. “And then I’m going to make sure they are off this island, and then I’m going to come back and find you.”

_And then I’m going to help you._

_All I’ve ever wanted to do was help you._

Thorin turned to him then, his face creasing into an unexpected frown, and for a moment he looked lost, and confused.

“Bilbo?” he asked, his voice almost afraid, but then the shade crept back over his expression and his frown was more of a glare, and his hand was fisting in Bilbo’s jumper, close to his throat, a sudden anger taking him; his grip tightened and it began to hurt, but Bilbo did not pull away, made no attempt to escape that cold hand or the force of the stare that came behind it.

“You do not belong,” Thorin said, only it might not have entirely been Thorin; the voice that came from his mouth seemed to be the voice of many, an ageless sound of so many souls lost to the sea and the storms and the Rock; it was pain and desolation and despair, and then Thorin let go so abruptly that Bilbo stumbled for a moment.

“Leave,” Thorin told him, in that same voice, creeping with an uncomfortable cadence so that Bilbo wondered, for a moment, if it was the Lonely Rock itself that was speaking, so many centuries of anger and neglect and suffering giving it a life of its own, built on too many negatives, forgetting the love and the joy and the laughter that _must_ have happened here, too.

Bilbo turned, and he did leave, and it was with no regret: he knew now that he would be returning.

 

* * *

 

Dis was asleep, when he found her room, and they roused the boys together, Kili cuddled against his mother’s neck, held in her arms; Fili was a little too tall and heavy for Bilbo to comfortably carry but he did so anyway, the young boy’s blonde hair all he could see of him as the boy buried his face against Bilbo’s throat, his mouth and nose against the slow thud of his pulse, as if he took some comfort from the sound of a life still remaining.

“Where are we going?” Kili asked, sleepily, and Dis tightened her arms around him.

“We’re going down to the docks,” Bilbo replied. “And then I’m going to wade across the causeway and find someone to come back over in a boat to pick the three of you up.”

Dis nodded, a strange and reserved nod.

“Will it not be too deep?”

The tide would have turned, and no doubt Bilbo might end up to his waist at the deepest part, but the thought did not deter him: he knew with some unspoken sense of urgency that he had to get the three of them off this place, away from the strange influence of it, lest it drag them even deeper into its dark and incalculable spell.

“It’ll be fine,” he replied, and then hugged Fili a little closer. “And then the three of you can stay with Bard until the morning, and then you can go home.”

But Kili was struggling against his mother’s hold now, showing more life than he ever had done before, and he was scowling as his face came into view.

“Uncle Thorin said that the Rock was our home,” he answered, his voice almost petulant. “I don’t _want_ to go. Fili said you would plant blackberry bushes.”

Dis and Bilbo exchanged a silent look; she had said very little since he had roused her, and it could only have been a part of the deep shade cast on her by this island that she had simply nodded when he had told her, with quite some conviction, that they needed to get off the Rock, _now._ Perhaps she too had realised that the presence on the Rock was more than just the sadness of the Durin family now, perhaps she understood even better than Bilbo that the place was coming to life in its own, dead way, but she had just bundled the boys in their jumpers and had led the way through the tall front doors and down the path to the docks.

“We’ll figure it out in the morning,” Bilbo replied, at the exact same moment that Dis said, “Perhaps we will come back, love. We’ll have to see what happens.”

This seemed to be enough to appease Kili; he just reached across the gap between Dis and Bilbo to take hold of Fili’s arm, as if he needed the physical touch between them, to keep him steady.

“What about Uncle Thorin?” Fili asked, quietly.

“I’ll be coming back for him,” Bilbo answered, and the gravity of his voice must have passed to Fili, for he did not argue and he did not ask any more. Even a child can understand the weight of a promise truly given; perhaps a child can even understand it better.

They turned a corner, and Dis stiffened.

Before them was a shadow, but not quite a shadow, for it took a greater form than any that Bilbo had seen before; it seemed almost to be a man, but not quite, but to his surprise he did not feel afraid. There was a strange quality to the place that its face should have been, as if there were eyes there, somewhere, and they looked the four of them up and down carefully.

Dis took half a step forward.

It seemed to reach for her, for just a moment.

“Father?” she asked, her voice a ghost of a whisper.

And though Bilbo still could not see anything more than the undulating darkness of the shade it seemed to recognise Dis too, reaching for her face, caressing her cheek with such an unexpected tenderness that the hairs on the back of Bilbo’s neck stood on end.

There might have been a smile, or it might have been his imagination; there was certainly a voice, a formless sound more like the whisper of the wind in the trees or the slow ease of a breaking wave than anything else, yet its words were as clear in Bilbo’s mind as any spoken aloud by a living soul.

 _I’m sorry,_ the voice seemed to say, and _I love you._

And now Dis was crying, silent tears streaming down her face, and the shade dropped what might once have been a hand from her cheek and moved from the path, leaving it open to them.

 _Save your sons,_ it said, and then suddenly there were more of them, more of those shadows that might once have been people, lining the path as if in honour guard.

Protecting them, Bilbo realised now. Protecting them from whatever might be out there in the darkness, from something that might have made them stay.

 _Save the innocent,_ the voices intoned, one and the same and achingly similar to the way that Thorin had spoken to him earlier.

_The fire has started._

_The night is long._

_We will take our own._

_But save the children._

 

* * *

 

They ran most of the way down to the dock from there; stumbling over loose stones on the path and slipping in the slick earth, and when they reached it Bilbo thought for a moment that their guard of shades had not been enough, for there was another figure on the dock, firm enough that it might have meant them harm; but then they drew closer, and the darkness parted, and Bilbo’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Bard?”

The fisherman nodded, his face drawing into a frown at the sight of the four of them.

“I thought I saw a fire,” he said, his voice low but with a strange, wavering quality. “I thought…”

“There was a fire,” Bilbo explained. “A tree, in the garden.”

Bard nodded, again.

“Should I-”

“Take them off the Rock,” Bilbo interrupted. “All three of them. Take them to the mainland and make sure they are safe, alright?”

Bard bit his lip, but he didn’t argue: he nodded at the other three, and Dis placed Kili gently on the dock as she took the ladder, moving down it with a strange lethargy, her eyes fixed on her sons as Bilbo lowered Fili down, as well. The older boy took a couple of steps closer to his brother, taking his hand.

“I could barely see the light of the fire from the Chapel House,” Bilbo said, his voice pitched low in the still and dark night so that it wouldn’t carry. Dis had made it to the boat by now, holding it steady against the ladder, her arms braced around it as first Kili stepped onto the rungs, making sure that if they fell she would be there to catch him.

Bard didn’t look at him, his eyes fixed on the black water of the sea.

“I could smell fire,” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper. “In my dreams.”

He was quiet for a long moment, and Bilbo just watched him, at the way that his eyes flickered back and forth, as if trying to see something in the darkness.

“There was a voice.”

Bilbo nodded, and looked away, across the sea, to where the shore would have been if he had been able to see it. There was a pale mist forming over the water, grey-white and eerie, reaching like fingers over the quietly rolling waves towards the Rock, towards him.

Bard made a low noise, almost distressed. “An old man’s voice, telling me to wake up.”

Bilbo almost smiled, but it strangled him to do so.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

Bard looked at him then, and there was something warm and pained in those eyes, something beyond mere friendship. They had been united by something beyond Bilbo’s control, by whatever force lived on this island: Bard’s own history was intertwined with the Rock, and there was a painful inevitability in his presence here. Bard knew it as much as Bilbo himself did: there was something knowing in that gaze as much as it was confused, something tragic.

“I’m glad I could come,” Bard replied, as Kili reached his mother and Fili took the ladder. Bard moved towards it then, taking the rusted iron in his grip.

“You’re not coming with us though, are you?”

He didn’t look at Bilbo, but the shorter man shook his head anyway.

“No,” he replied, his voice still quiet, not wanting the children to hear. “I’ve got to find Thorin.”

Bard glanced up at him, briefly.

“Is that the only reason?”

“No,” Bilbo said once more, and the corner of his mouth twitched upwards at that, in a wry, unamused smile. “There is more, but I’m not sure you’d believe me.”

Bard laughed; a hollow, empty sound.

“There was a man in my room when I woke,” Bard told him, and there was a sudden, cold note of fear in his voice, something inherently wrong that Bilbo recognised a startling clarity. The rest of Bard’s words came out quickly, in a rush, as if he were afraid to admit them. “An old man, a stooped man, and he didn’t have eyes, just shadows.”

He caught Bilbo’s eye, and he must have recognised something in them, because he blinked, and his forehead began to pull into a frown. “You’ve seen him too, haven’t you?”

Bilbo shrugged gently. “I’ve seen many things on the Rock, Bard.”

Bard nodded. “A lot of people have died on here.”

Fili reached the boat, and as he looked up at the pair of them, Bilbo saw that his palms were stained with the rust from the ladder, a strange, bloody-orange colour that showed up too bright in the darkness.

“Right now I think I’d believe just about anything,” Bard said, and then he took to the ladder, slowly lowering himself down the rungs. When his chest was level to the dock he turned his face upwards, the pale lines of shadow and skin creating stark planes of it, worry etched into every line.

“Are my children safe?” he asked Bilbo, his voice for the first time that night sounding truly alive. “Should I wake them, take them and these three away?”

Bilbo fell to his knees beside Bard, his head lowered. “Perhaps,” he replied, and he reached to touch Bard’s hand, the skin reassuringly warm under his touch. “Perhaps you should. Just drive away from the sea and the cold and go south, somewhere warmer and friendlier that isn’t in the shadow of this mausoleum.”

But Bard just sighed, and looked away.

“But this is my home.”

One side of Bilbo’s mouth pulled upwards, a gentle movement.

“And I don’t think the dead have any interest in the living,”

Bard’s eyes drifted away into the darkness, in the direction of the top of the Rock: it could have been moments away, or it could have been miles: right now it felt like both.

“Except for the ones in Erebor House.”

“Aye,” Bilbo replied. “Apart from those.”

Bard continued downwards, and Bilbo rose to his feet: he didn’t bother brushing the dirt from his knees from the damp, icy wooden boards. The cold had sunk into his bones but it was worth having: it was numbing but it made him feel alive.

“I’ll leave them at my house, and come back for you,” Bard told him, his voice deep and low, his voice a promise.

Bilbo nodded.

“It should be morning, by then.”

Bard’s eyebrows raised, his mouth tightening into a line as he glanced across at where the horizon should have been. “It should be morning now. The sun was rising on the village when I left.”

Bilbo glanced at the sky: it was as dark as it had been hours ago, as dark as it had been when he had first woken up in Erebor House, woken by footsteps in the corridor. There was no sun rising in the sky, no grey-navy lightening that predicted the dawn: the tendrils of red and gold were not threading across the horizon. There would be no daylight in Erebor House today: there would be no dawn.

“I don’t think it’ll rise here until it’s all finished,” Bilbo told him truthfully.

Bard reached the boat, rocking it slightly. Dis and her sons were huddled together, and Bilbo was reminded of the sight of the three of them when they had first arrived on that island, mother and sons

“Go, Bard,” Bilbo said, quietly, stepping away from the ladder. “And perhaps I’ll see you again.”

“Stay safe,” Bard replied, as he started the engine of his boat, the sound of it strangely muffled in the dark, as if some great hand was holding down the sound.

“Look after them,” he called after the boat, Bard still turned to face him, expression pulled into a frown.

Bard just nodded, and as he disappeared into the mist and the dark, he raised his hand. He didn’t wave, just kept it raised upwards, palm towards Bilbo, in something close to a salute.

He held on to that image long after Bard had gone beyond his sight, held tight onto the strange comfort that it gave, until he turned, and left the dock, to the dark of the Rock.

 

* * *

 

The line of guarding shadows had gone by the time he returned up the winding path towards the gardens: they had slipped away into the night, their work done now that Dis and her sons were gone from the Rock. The shades of the dead had slipped back into the bones of the Rock, back into the chill black from where they had come, leaving Bilbo alone as he padded back into the eerie garden, through the narrow passageways through looming, moss covered boulders, through the skeletal branches of stunted, twisting trees.

The shadows were thicker now than ever before, but they seemed to push him forward, past crumbling marble and the stone terraces, through earth pattered with the frost of the still night, past the remains of winter shrubs and the tangled snares of the dog roses.

The tree was still burning, but it was closer to embers than flame now, and Thorin was no longer standing before it, no longer watching the bright orange flicker with distant, cold eyes.

Bilbo couldn’t find him.

A cold fear tightened in his throat as his pace began to quicken, as he strode from one place to the next, the shadows growing deeper: had they taken him already?

Where was he?

He had thought there had been time enough to return to Thorin, to the man he- to the man he cared for, but had he been wrong?

Cobwebs brushed against his face, slack and broken already; their creators had fled.

He felt a swell of nausea, smoke and salt thick in his throat.

But then, before he had time to slip into a true panic, he found himself before the faceless statue, the one he had stopped by so many times before, only it seemed to Bilbo now that his arms had moved, that it was stretching more towards him now than before, almost as if it wanted to take Bilbo into its arms, and hold him.

Hold his warm, living body against its cold stone skin; feel its heartbeat against the marble.

It didn’t have eyes, but where they might once have been the shadows played.

There was the sound of slowly dripping water.

There was the sound of wind whispering through a narrow space.

“The grotto,” Bilbo breathed, and the shadows seemed to move.

“He’s in there, isn’t he?” he said to the still night, and the air seemed to expand around him before drawing tighter again, as if it had breathed a deep, aching sigh: it was enough of an answer.

The walls of the grotto were narrower than he had remembered them being, the slick rock scraping across his shoulders as he followed its winding path into the Rock. The odd shell, here and there, fixed onto the wall by some unknown artist caught against his arm or side, and as one bit particularly deep he felt the warm-wet sensation of blood.

The cave in the centre was as he remembered, the strange shadows hitting the ridges of the shells in ways that did not seem entirely natural.

And there was Thorin, standing by the pool, still lit with some strange, dim light, as if there were some phosphorescence about it, some arcane glow from deep within the earth. Thorin must have heard him, but he didn’t turn.

“Thorin,” Bilbo whispered.

The light from the pool made him look all the paler, made him look even more ill than he had done before: his eyes were lit by that glow in a way that didn’t seem quite human, that made him seem more than alive.

And then he was striding forward, into the water, it lapping first around his ankles and then his calves, then his thighs and hips, and how could it be that deep when it was just a pool in a grotto made to entertain a pretty young woman – but not just a woman, not just any woman, a one who lost her heart and a necklace in one night.

Thorin was in the water to his chest now, and he was turning.

His eyes finally caught Bilbo’s, and they were empty.

Then he was underwater, the surface still, and he did not reappear.

Bilbo took half a step closer.

There was no shadow underwater, no sign that Thorin had ever even stepped into the pool.

He had always been afraid of drowning.

Now the water was cold against his skin, but he was not afraid.

One step, and then another.

A deep breath, as if it was his last.

His clothes felt heavy in the water; his body felt like a leaden weight.

He sank below the surface, and he did not reappear.

The grotto was empty.

The seashell walls were weeping.

Around them, the Rock sighed.

 

* * *

 

 

People change, and smile: but the agony abides.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trash, I'm so sorry, I meant to get this proofed on Sunday but completely timed out. Please forgive me? D:

The water grew colder as he sank.

His bones were lead; his skin was too tight across his frame, stretched and thin.

The kiss of water gave no relief; a panic began to rise in his chest as the surface above him seemed to grow further away.

He had expected to find Thorin down here, in the strange phosphorescent water, but he was alone.

He was quite alone.

_Love on the water, love underwater, love love, and so on._

What was that from? He couldn’t remember.

He was alone in the pool, and he knew in some inexplicable way that if he reached for the surface, if he kicked his legs and pushed upwards, that he would find no escape. The water had taken him, and there would be no easy way out now.

His feet found the bottom; it was soft sand, white and gleaming in the blue-silver light.

What was that by his foot?

Still sinking, some force pulling him down, he found himself on his knees, and the sand was grittier against his palms that he had expected.

A bone, bleached white, smooth to the touch.

It was about as long as his forearm.

It _was_ a forearm.

The panic tightened.

And then he was looking – _and where was Thorin? –_ ahead of him there was something different, something other than the silver-slick of pool’s impossibly deep walls, something other than imprisoning stone; the clarity of vision was different, was brighter somehow, as if the light had changed, and he pushed his feet against the ground and moved through the water towards it, towards whatever it was, and as he drew level with the wall he realised that it wasn’t a wall at all, but an opening.

Another bone hit his foot, long and slender, stripped of flesh by the touch of the pool.

The water through there was brighter, and even colder, as if chilled by some other source.

A thin stream of air bubbles escaped his mouth, running in a gentle caress up his face, and the burning pain of his lungs grew just a little worse.

Thorin was not here, not in this strange graveyard of bones and sand.

The sudden taste of brine, a movement in the water, some current through the opening luring him forward.

He came to find Thorin.

He could not hold his breath for much longer.

The rock was smooth against his hands as he pushed himself through the opening, too narrow to walk through; it scraped his shoulders and chest as he eased himself through.

It would almost have been too tight for Thorin.

What if it only got tighter, and half way along he would come across the other man, trapped and struggling for air, or else already unconscious, dying, dead?

There would be no escape.

He would reach to touch the skin of the other man and wait for the water to take him, so that they might become bones together down here, lost and alone and unaccounted for, just two more bodies claimed by the rock.

But then it was getting wider, and the light was getting brighter until all of a sudden it disappeared, leaving him in the dark, and panic gripped him even tighter – _what had happened to that light?_ He kicked his legs, his feet struggling for grip against the rock, searching for some ridge to propel himself from, but it was impossibly smooth, and he was forced to struggle on alone.

_I can’t drown I can’t die down here I can’t I won’t they won’t take me I promised my mother I’d die in the sunlight and I can’t die when I haven’t been back home to check if her roses have lasted the winter_

The air was tightening in his lungs, his chest was on fire and his hands were going numb, the cold stripping sensation from his legs and soon he wouldn’t be able to kick at all, and now that the light was gone he couldn’t see how much further he had to go, couldn’t see how much longer this tunnel was, and why hadn’t he ever thought to have anyone check the pool in the grotto, check what strange underground water was its source, check how deep and far it went? He’d been afraid, afraid of the twisted shadows cast by the shells and the crippling sense of disease that the glow of the water had struck in him, afraid of the hands of the dead and the influence they had over him, afraid of that creeping sense of someone _watching him._

He hadn’t wanted to think about it.

_Thorin, Thorin, Thorin._

_Your sister is waiting for you. Your nephews need you._

_I need you._

And just as his vision began to blur, just as the prickle of fear began to work its way along his spine, just as his fingers lost all sensation, just as he began to truly think he would die in here the tunnel ended, quite suddenly, in some sharp drop off. He couldn’t see the bottom, but he kicked his feet weakly against the edge of the tunnel and aimed upwards, where there was a glimmer of light, the promise of air.

He broke the surface with a pained noise, falling back almost immediately as he took in a great mouthful, half air and half seawater, swallowing back a wave of nausea, and for a moment or two he just floated on the dark surface, breathing, making sure that he was truly alive.

_I made it I made it mother I made it I didn’t give in, I promised you I’d never give in and I didn’t and I’m alive_

Finally, as his dizziness began to clear and his eyes focused, he looked around himself, doing his best to stay afloat in the water.

And that was when he saw Thorin.

 

* * *

 

There was no light.

There was only strange shadows, shifting grey.

He wasn’t sure where he was.

There had been the smell of fire, burning his throat as he inhaled.

Smoke, acrid smoke, thick and strong, from damp wood.

It had been damp the night his Grandfather died.

It was always damp on this island.

He could feel it, under his feet; the rock was screaming, the rock was moving, the rock was crying for him.

It needed him.

_She needed him._

They’d taken it from her, they’d taken everything from her, the stone around her throat and the man in her bed and the hope from her life, they’d taken the life growing inside her and her own life too, a barrel against her head and a cold, cold dread, a pain in her stomach and blood on the floor.

The long, cold drop to the sea below.

But it hadn’t been the end, it would never be the end, not until they gave her it back.

It wasn’t enough, it would never be enough, but it was _something._

And then she might let him sleep.

Yes, there had been the taste of smoke and the cold of night and hands reaching for him, but not her hands and not the ghostly, dead hands of his father and grandfather, no, they had been _living_ hands, warm skin, and-

Bilbo

It had been Bilbo, hadn’t it?

Skin under his hands, then, the smooth, soft skin of a throat, and he had held so tight, and-

There was air prickling at his skin, his clothes were wet and sticking to him, and it was still so dark, but he wasn’t cold, he hadn’t felt the cold in what felt like years, and none of it mattered any more, none of it, because-

_Where were Fili and Kili? Where was Dis? Where was Bilbo?_

Because he’d found it, he’d sank into the water like she had told him to until he’d found the place where his body had fallen after Thorin's own ancestor had shot him, where the fires of his passion had been quenched by death, and he’d passed over his bones to where the stone had fallen, had been rolled by the gentle current of this pool, fed through the narrow passage by another, and he hadn’t even felt his lungs burning-

And the darkness of his vision had lightened, just a little, as he had come closer, to a stone glowing with a strange opalescence, blues and whites and softer colours too, as if it was reflecting some light, but there was no light in here, just the stone on its fine chain, tarnished and old now, but the heart glowed as strongly as it had ever had-

And he’d been supposed to give it to her, hadn’t he?

But there was something about the stone-

_It’s calling for you it wants you and you are the Lord of the Rock, it should always have been yours, it belonged to the Line of Durin, we found it and we cared for it and we loved it and she lost it, it is ours, it is mine-_

It was shining through the rolling shadows of her presence, and he could hear someone calling from him from far away, could hear his father’s voice, his grandfather’s voice, and they were desperate and lost, but that was impossible, they were dead, they had died and left him with ashen ruins and hopelessness and a broken family-

And she was screaming, rage and grief and desire-

But the stone was singing, a gentle lullaby, and he had felt his eyes droop even as he had broken the surface of the pool and pulled himself from the water, even as his hands had tightened around the glow so that he might hide it from the world, might hide it from everyone else, and that song was drowning out everything else-

Already her voice, already the cries of the family that had loved him, were fainter-

Like noise heard from underwater, muffled and faint-

And he was cold, and tired-

_When was the last time he slept?_

_Where was his family?_

And if he just sat down, for just a little while, to rest, then perhaps he could rise again, and leave this place, him and the stone, they could go back to the House and curl before the fire, and keep anyone who tried to take it again away, and-

“Thorin?”

That voice-

Not his grandfather. Not his father. Not her.

Not even the stone.

“Thorin?”

Closer, warmer, more real.

“Thorin can you hear me?”

The light of the stone was so bright, it was blinding him, but there was something else there, something close, and he could feel the heat of their body even in the cold of this subterranean cave, even so far away from the sun and the day and all that was good about the world.

“Thorin, look at me.”

Bilbo, it was Bilbo.

What was Bilbo doing down here?

Bilbo wasn’t dead-

Wait.

Thorin wasn’t dead either, was he?

Not yet, not yet.

“Thorin, I need you to look at me.”

And slowly, so slowly, he tore his eyes from the glow of the stone in his hands, pulled his mind just enough from the fog that had clouded it for so long now, and looked up: and there Bilbo was, pale and shaking and so clearly afraid but _there,_ holding his wrists and staring up at Thorin with such a startling gaze, with so much assurance and fear and hope, his hair falling in wet curls about his forehead and his eyes so tired, but so _real._

_He was real._

“What are you doing here?” Thorin asked, and his voice was hoarse and it hurt his throat to speak, but Bilbo’s shoulders seemed to sag in relief at the sound, and then some ghost of a smile was pulling at his mouth, and he moved just a little closer, his warmth seeping from him into Thorin’s body.

“I’m here to find you,” Bilbo told him, his voice gentle but sure. “I’m here to bring you back.”

 

* * *

 

The water had been difficult to pull himself from, slick against his skin, as soft as silk but far colder, trying to pull him back, and his arms had ached and his legs were still going numb from the cold but he had pulled himself out anyway, had forced himself forward, up onto the rock.

It was there that Thorin was stood, tall and certain, his head bowed over something that he held in his hands, something that glowed with an unearthly light. His hands almost entirely covered it, but here and there the light shone through between his fingers, lighting the strange cave they were in with a discomforting glow.

That had been what had been lighting the pool, Bilbo realised now: it had that same quality of light, that same uncertain phosphorescence, slipping from blue to white to green, bright enough even within Thorin’s hands to light up the hard lines of his faces, the shadows of his exhaustion, with those discomforting colours.

But as strange and mad as he might look right now, hunched over a glowing stone – for some part of Bilbo just knew that this was what it must be, just as he had known to follow Thorin into the water, just as he had known that the shadows on the road had appeared to guard Dis and the boys, not harm them – it was still _Thorin,_ it was still the stern man who loved his nephews and asked him about blackberries, the man who laughed rarely but when he did, laughed with a deep, throaty heartiness that lifted Bilbo’s heart.

The feeling of hands around his throat were still there, but in some strange, certain way he knew too that that was not really _Thorin,_ not the true Thorin, the one who had come searching for a home and a place for his boys to grow and heal, not the Thorin who cupped his sister’s face and watched the sea with a faint smile, not the Thorin who had held Bilbo close on top of that cliff, not the Thorin whose heart had beat a rhythm so strong that Bilbo had been able to feel it in his own chest, echoing with his own, as if they had always been moving to the same cadence, and it had just taken them a little time to realise.

And so he had gone to him, had watched the tendrils of his dark, wet hair fall about his face, and had held his wrists; his skin had been so cold that if Bilbo had not been able to watch him breathing, if he had not been able to see the way the light flickered in his downturned eyes, if he hadn’t felt that reassuring pulse beneath his own fingertips, then he might have been certain that he was dead.

He had called to him, over and over again, because there was nothing else to do, and it had hurt when he hadn’t responded, had cut when Thorin continued to stare, unable to see anything other than the damned stone, but he had kept trying, because if his mother had taught him anything it was that you never stop, even if it seems like there is no hope, and eventually Thorin had looked up at him, his eyes so lost and afraid that Bilbo’s heart had felt as if it were breaking in his chest.

“I’m here to find you,” Bilbo had told him. “I’m here to bring you back.”

Thorin’s mouth had opened, just a little, but he had said nothing, had just continued to stare at Bilbo as if he were the first person he had ever seen, as if he were the only real thing left in his world.

“Can you?” he asked, and his voice was low, and ragged.

Bilbo nodded.

“Thorin,” he said, and there was something bittersweet about the taste of the man’s name in his mouth now. “Thorin, I need you to give me the stone.”

Thorin’s hands tightened around it, but Bilbo did not flinch away; there was a fear in those eyes, still looking just at Bilbo, and he realised in that moment that now Thorin had found the necklace there would be no way to convince him to simply hand it over. The stone had waited too many years to be found, had been left too long to glow with the force of the desire that coveted it, and now it was in the hands of the line of Durin once more.

“That’s okay,” he told Thorin, quietly, his fingers running soothingly over Thorin’s wrists as the other man's expression began to break, began to crumble into something painful and scared. “That’s really okay. Thorin, look at me.”

And Thorin did, just, managing to drag his gaze back up from where it had begun to slip back to the stone.

“We’re going to go find Dis, okay?”

Thorin took in a quick, sudden breath.

“Fili and Kili, too. They were asking where you were, when I saw them last. They’re good boys, and they miss you. Your sister does, too. They love you.”

Thorin nodded, a strained, small movement, as if it were taking a great deal of effort, and Bilbo smiled; it was tentative but it was real, oddly warm in the dark cave, his hair lit blue from the light of the stone as Thorin’s hands around it loosened.

“I’ve missed you too,” he said, his voice quieter now, and there was a spark of something clearer in Thorin’s eyes, something that wasn’t the stone.

Then he was kissing him, Thorin’s hair wet against his chest and his mouth chill against Bilbo’s own, cold and unresponsive for the longest of moments before he was suddenly pressing back, his face tilting to slant better against Bilbo’s, his nose pressing into Bilbo’s cheek and a hand on his side, curling tight into the fabric of his soaking shirt, pulling that frozen fabric away from his skin, sending a shiver of cold and something else up his spine.

And Thorin kissed like he was drowning, kissed as if there was nothing else in this world left but he and Bilbo, kissed him, it seemed, like there was nothing else but this time in this place, as if the world had crumbled around them, his teeth pulling Bilbo’s lower lip with just enough bite to sting, his mouth slowly warming against Bilbo’s tongue, one hand curling around his lower back and pulling him closer, now the other in Bilbo’s hair, one thumb running along his cheek, pushing his hair back from his face, and-

Both hands on Bilbo, and a solid weight left in Bilbo’s own.

But he didn’t pull away. Thorin’s lips were finally warm, but his kiss was softening now, a gentle but insistent press, Thorin’s beard a scrape against his face, a pleasant ache blooming in his chest, and right now he didn’t care about the cold, didn’t care about the burning trees or the shrieking gulls or the line of shadows guarding their own, he didn’t care about the damned Rock or the causeway or the tide, he didn’t care about anything other than the man that was kissing him, kissing him like Bilbo was actually _there,_ as if Thorin were there too, not off in some distant place in his mind far from where Bilbo could reach him.

But the stone was weighing heavily in his hands, heavier than a jewel that size should ever have been, and after a moment longer he pressed one last, lingering kiss against Thorin’s mouth and took a step back, his hands covering the stone quickly.

He turned, but not before he caught sight of Thorin sagging, a strange expression in his eyes, perhaps relief, perhaps pain.

In the corners the shadows were rolling, a mass of impossible shades of black, distinct despite the darkness, bruised and angry looking.

“You couldn’t find it, could you?” Bilbo said, quietly, as he took a step towards the water.

Above the surface of the pool the shadows massed and bled into one another, at first just a blur but then a shape, a body, the indistinct form of something that might once have been living, the shape of something that might once have had hopes, and dreams, and aspirations; now it was just loss, and pain, and anger.

And arms, reaching for Bilbo, across the still surface of the pool, dark as stone, with the shine of tempered glass, reflecting nothing but his own pale body, the glow of the stone pouring from his hands, the stone walls reaching up around him, closing in above him, entombing him in its subterranean hold.

The shadows moved closer, and from behind him came Thorin’s indistinct cry, though whether it was for Bilbo’s safety or for the stone in his hands he couldn’t be sure.

Was that a face, in the depths of those shadows?

Was that a mouth, looming open in despair?

And then arms were reaching, hands grasping, and for the briefest of moments Bilbo thought that those arms would close around him and that he might hear the gentle sounds of a soothing voice in his ear, comforting him the way that a mother might before pulling him into the water, before pulling him into the cool darkness of his death.

The shadows were cool against his skin, cooler than Thorin’s had even been, the cold of death, the cold of a body where no heart had beaten for the longest of time.

The hands closed around his.

There was a face, deep in those shadows, the glimmer of eyes, like quartz in the rock, the hint of a mouth, and now it was curving into a smile, and the light in Bilbo’s hands began to dim, the longing realised.

The ghost of a smile.

A whisper, formless and unsure.

The light went out.

The stone slipped from his hands then, and it was just a rock, just a jewel on the end of a tarnished silver chain, and fell into the water with only the slightest of sounds. He watched the ripples spread slowly out across the pool as there was a breath of warmth against his cheek, as if someone close to him had taken one final exhale, and then the shadows were gone, disappearing into the dark as if they had never even been there.

And all of a sudden it was just a pool, surface easing back to its glossy stillness as the ripples slowed down, and it was just a cave, cold and clammy but entirely mundane; all of a sudden it was just a morning, just one morning out of so many in a long life, and he was cold and exhausted and hungry, and everything hurt, but he was alive and he was here and the stone was _gone._

“Bilbo?”

Thorin’s voice was quiet, pained, and he turned back to where the other man was slumped against the wall, his hands in fists at his side, and as Bilbo watched Thorin brought them up in front of himself, and slowly unclenched them.

“It was never mine, was it?”

Thorin’s eyes were bright as they looked back up at him, bright with some unspoken feeling, and slowly Bilbo shook his head, though he didn’t know if Thorin meant the necklace, meant the House, meant the island itself.

“It belongs to everyone who has ever lived here,” he replied, quietly, and though he said no more he thought that Thorin understood him; there was something in his gaze, some quirk of warmth and some

The island was not Thorin’s; neither had it belonged just to Thrain, or to Thror. The Lonely Rock belonged to everyone who had ever walked the cliffs and tasted the brine in the morning air, to every person who had fallen asleep in its House with the sound of the sea breaking in a gentle murmur outside the window. The ghosts of all who had lived here walked its pathways, danced in the autumn mists through the gardens, and they would always be here, would always stand their silent sentinel as the year grew darker, and the days grew shorter.

Thorin’s eyes were clearer than they had been before.

Bilbo wondered, for a moment, if the dawn was finally breaking over the island, if it would be light yet outside of this cave.

His body ached, down to his very bones.

“There is light over there,” Thorin said, his voice quiet.

Bilbo smiled, a small and tired smile.

Thorin’s hand was still cold, but perhaps it was warmer than it was before.

 

* * *

 

“What is it?” Bard asked, as Dis looked up suddenly from where she had been staring at her hands, an empty expression that had been leaving the fisherman feel a little on edge, feel a little disconcerted.

Her face was pulling into a frown, and not just the strange, empty sort of frown that had been distorting her strong features since Bard had first come across her and Bilbo and her sons earlier that morning on the island: it was a real frown, a confused look.

“Where…” she started, before trailing off.

She sat up a little, and her hands ran over the crowns of both her son’s heads, one curled up on either side of her, half-asleep against the warmth of her stomach.

Bard could feel Sigrid hovering behind him, clearly concerned, but he reached over his shoulder without looking and took her wrist, giving it a brief squeeze of comfort.

Dis was still frowning, her mouth twitching occasionally as if she were about to speak, though she remained silent for quite some time.

“I remember seeing my father,” she said, after a long, slow moment. “I remember seeing my Grandfather. But they’re dead.”

Bard nodded.

“I know. My father was the one who went over the Rock, who tried to put out the fire.”

The corner of her mouth curved, just a little, flooding her face with a warmth and a grace that left Bard feeling quite at a loss.

“He was the one that saved my father, then,” she told him, and he blinked.

“He died,” was all he managed in reply, and then her smile was just a little wider, and just a touch more sad.

“Ah, he did,” she agreed. “But several days later. We got to say goodbye to him, at least. We wouldn’t have had that, if it wasn’t for your family.”

Bard sat back in his chair, a little at a loss, and then the expression in her eyes grew a little pained again.

“I couldn’t have seen them on the island,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else, and for a long moment Bard wondered what to reply to that, whether to agree that it was impossible and sink into a rationality that was easy and tempting now that the morning had dawned on the coast, now that he was at home with the comforting, familiar sounds of his little life: the cry of gulls, the drip of the faucet, the sound of Tilda singing somewhere upstairs, the whistle of the kettle.

“Perhaps not,” Bard agreed. “But I have seen them, too.”

Dis stared at him, and then she nodded, her dark eyes grave and tired.

“It feels like the last few days have been full of shadows,” she said, her voice quiet and full of such an impossible sadness that Bard felt something tighten inexplicably in his chest at the sound. “So dark, and silent, and so far out of my control. I feel like I have been barely living, barely thinking.”

Bard just nodded: he did not know what else to say to her.

There came the clatter of cups in the kitchen as Sigrid made tea; one of the boys, by Dis’ side, made a breathy, tired sound as he reached across her lap to take his brother’s hand.

He glanced out the window.

The sun was slowly rising over the horizon, threading gold and red through the blanket of the sky. He felt his age in his bones more than he had ever done before, the cold and the chill still not having left him, and he remembered his promise to Bilbo- how had he forgotten, for even a moment? As soon as he had stepped foot on the sand of the mainland it had slipped from his mind, he had quite managed to forget that two souls remained still on the island, as if something out of his control was trying to make quite certain that he did not return before he should.

It hurt to stand; his knees clicked painfully, and there was a dull throbbing ache in his head; it appeared quite suddenly, and for a moment he felt dizzy.

He looked at Dis, her eyes so much clearer than they had been.

“Where…” she asked, one again, and then the tip of her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip. “Where is Bilbo?” Her voice was cool, as if masking some great fear. “He woke us up, didn’t he? He lead us down to the dock.”

Bard nodded, afraid to reply, knowing that he could offer her no answers.

She swallowed, and the hands stroking over her son’s hair stilled.

“ _Where is my brother?_ ”

 

* * *

Across the narrow divide of sea, across the rocks and sand and the slick seaweed, was the Rock, separated from the mainland by centuries of history and a narrow tidal channel.

Over the Rock, the sun was rising.

The air smelt of brine, and fresh air, and the promise of ice.

In the distance came the bark of a seal, the splash of a diving bird, the gentle lapping of the sea.

There was a thin plume of smoke coming from the Rock still, from some old tree in the gardens, but it had been too wet for it to spread any further, and it looked as if the fire were dying out now, the smoke barely more than a wisp, disappearing into the clear sky.

The island was still.

Erebor House seemed to exhale in the dawn, and settle against the stone, as if finally letting itself slip into a long, peaceful sleep.

The sea lapped at the base of the cliffs of the island, kissing the rocks with its cold, lonely touch.

Here and there were the dark shadows of caves, of fissures, leading into the stone, more shadows than anything else from the shore.

And there, just there.

A flicker of movement, a shape in one of those shadows.

Small, barely there, but coming closer.

A person- no, two, half leaning on each other, stumbling, hands against the rock to steady themselves, their movements tired and lethargic, their skin too pale and their bodies shaking but pushing forward, from the darkness into the dawn light, together, _alive._

 

* * *

 

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,  
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters  
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.


	11. Chapter 11

Spring comes, in its own time, and the winter thaws.

The cold tendrils of frost that appeared every morning across the windowpanes begin to thin, and eventually disappear. The iced-over fountains start to melt, and soon enough they turn on the restored pumps again, and they begin to work: they make a gentle noise as the days begin to grow longer again, shifting the heavy silence of the gardens.

The sky grows brighter with each passing day, the clouds lighter and further away, and the spring months bring cool, fresh winds. They taste of the earth and perhaps of the sea a little, but they are not heavy with the brine, and the taste fades quickly.

There is a potential in the soil that grows ever stronger; when winter passes, so comes the spring, and the rebirth of the earth.

The tide eases across the beach with only the rolling sound of breaking waves: perhaps it still mutters to itself on occasion, for the sea charts an ever restless course, but it no longer whispers to the sleeping, no longer eases its careful chill into the dreams of those who live near to it. The strange presence that had lingered about the island has passed now into only stories, and the memories of the few who ever understood that there was something more to the island than ruins and shadows.

Spring rain warms the earth, and soon shoots are pushing through, jewel bright against the dirt, and they grow stronger and taller every day; soon they begin to put out leaves, and tightly curled buds, just promising the colour of flowers. The island slowly begins to shake off the heavy slumber of the winter and wakes again, somehow feeling more alive than ever before, healthier, as if it had finally cut off some corruption that had been clinging to it for the longest time, like some fruit tree pruned back but growing stronger again for it the next year.

The workmen return, and finish off the final touches to the island: they build a desk in one of the old stone cottages down on the shore to act as a ticket booth, and begin to put up signs around the island, to direct a visitor from one place to the next. Handrails are put along every path; information panels are put in place. It looks less like a place of nightmares and ghostly whispers, and more like any other Grayhame Trust properties around the country. It is beautiful, but it is almost entirely mundane.

The grotto is just a grotto now, a little damp and peculiar; the pool no longer glows, there is no longer the strange, sort of claustrophobia.

Birds return to the island, and not just the screaming gulls: a finch appears first, at the end of January, then resilient little sparrows, and then cormorants begin to wheel overhead. One day a fisherman spots a puffin diving into the waters, and soon enough more and more of them begin to nest in the cliffs, filling in those glaring crevasses with nests and their bright chatter.

Bilbo doesn’t see any of this.

He left.

Bilbo finishes the work on the Lonely Rock from the comfort of his home: he has his notes and papers from the Chapel house shipped over: he couldn't quite bring himself to go back in person, not at first. He thinks it must have been Bard who went over and collected them all up for him, but he doesn’t know for sure: the package comes without any note, and he can’t quite bring himself to call the stoic old fisherman, but there is a postcard in the box that he knows he never bought himself.

It is an old shot of the island, the summer sun rising over the sea, the sky a wash of blues and pinks, threaded through with the orange-gold of the dawn. Erebor House is still a ruin, and everything looks calm, and peaceful. Someone's written Bilbo's name on the back, but they haven't signed it, and he doesn't know Bard's handwriting to know if this is his.

He tucks it in the frame of his bedroom mirror, where he can look at it every morning.

Gandalf approves his notes, and sends him a copy of the tour guide when it is published: it feels a little strange to leaf through it, the pages glossy and new. The garden looks beautiful in the professional pictures: Bifur had come back in the Spring, and had filled up the beds: the bulbs he had planted in the autumn have sprung from the ground in a riot of colour, crocuses and anemone and daffodils complimented now by merrybells and jacob’s ladder, woodland irises and bluestars. They have found no trace of a burnt tree, though Bilbo still remembers the taste of the ash in his mouth.

He avoids the section of the guide on the Durin family for a few days, until eventually he cannot bring himself not to look. The line of Durin stare at him, first from the copies of oil paintings , then from old family photographs, and he follows each strong brow and jutting jaw with his eyes, as if he might bring them to life just by staring.

They never found a picture of the Lady of the House, the Lady who lost her life to the cliffs and her heart to a conman, but Bilbo remembers her, too.

Then he comes to the last photograph, in colour this time, and there is an ache in his chest that he doesn’t want to think about as he looks first at Dis, then Fili and Kili, and finally at Thorin.

It wasn’t taken in Erebor House, but in some unfamiliar sitting room – perhaps from their house in York.

They look… content.

He misses them.

Sometimes he wonders at how different everything feels in his house now: how strange and incomplete it all feels, as if he is just waiting to turn into a room to see something that should be there, but never is. Would he have still gone north, last year, if he had known how changed he would have been by all of this? Would he have taken the job, knowing that he would come back well, but perhaps not quite the same person that had left?

He tries not to think of Thorin, of a cold mouth against his own, of that strange and wild wonder that curled in his chest whenever Thorin looked at him.

If he had never gone, he would never have met Thorin.

And there is no reason that he would ever see Thorin again: they have not spoken since they parted ways on the coast. Thorin took his family and left the island, and he and Bilbo shared little more than awkwardly formal farewells outside Bard’s house as their taxi’s arrived. Thorin hasn’t called him since, but then Bilbo hasn’t tried to contact him, either. Somehow everything felt a little too raw those first few months, when the chill of winter clung still to his bones, before the promise of warmth began to heal him again.

The house is due to open to the public on the 20th of March, only weeks away, really, and this will be the first opening weekend of a project that he has not attended in person, the first time he has not watched the queues with pride, the first time he has not personally overseen all the planned activities and special events. Gandalf has organised them, and he’s sure that they will go off without a hitch, but it still feels strange to him.

It is peculiar, but in an odd way, he misses the House.

He misses the fountains and the cold, distant beauty of the place; he misses the view from the conservatory and the chill in his bones, the way Dis’ eyes lit up in laughter, reminding him that whilst grief might linger on, it does not have to always remain as strong and painful as it was when it was a fresh wound. He even misses those strange shadows, and Thorin’s looming presence; he misses the feel of that cold earth under his hands, and the sight of Fili and Kili darting between the briar.

Sometimes he is convinced that he can hear the screaming of gulls, but when he looks up at the sky, there is never anything there.

He wonders how long it will take for the ache that pulls his eyes ever northwards to disappear, how long he will have to wait until he no longer dwells so deeply on a distant shore, a lonely island, so far away that it might not even be real. 

Have they gone back, too? Has Thorin? Is he stood even now on those windswept cliffs, watching the sun set over the moors of the mainland? Is his hair still shorn short, would his beard still gently scratch at Bilbo’s fingers if he cupped Thorin’s face? Is Fili talking more, is Kili’s laugh even louder now that it is no longer tinged with the cold of winter? How does Dis smile, after all that she has seen – it is bright with the joy of being alive, with the joy of seeing her home restored, or is it dimmer, touched by the weight of grief and the chill hands of the dead?

He could call, of course. Dis had told him to, the boys had held his hands and told him to come and visit them.

Thorin hadn’t said anything, but he had held Bilbo, just briefly, as they had parted, and there had been some tension in his shoulders, as if he were brimming with things that he could not bring himself to say.

But who knows what those words would have been? Thanks, perhaps, or praise, or merely some exhausted contentment at the fact that they had both survived. They might not have been the words that Bilbo wanted to hear.

So he tried to cast it from his mind, and thought instead of other things, trying to ignore that strange restlessness in his heart. He trims back his apple trees and his roses, and he reads his books and answers the accumulation of letters and emails he has received in his absence. He visits relatives and friends and bakes cakes, trying not to think about the Lonely Rock.

Until one day, a few weeks later, he is tidying, and he knocks over a pile of papers; underneath is the guidebook, and it falls to the floor, open on the introductory page. He had not read it before (they were his words, and he remembers them well enough) but a byline at the bottom catches his eye.

_The family will be in residence from March to August, and will retire to York for the winter months._

He swallows, and it hurts a little.

So they would be returning to the island, too.

 

* * *

 

It took him about an hour to make all the calls he would need, to book his ticket and to order a taxi for the other end, to call Gandalf and to pack himself a bag. The ride to the station seemed to drag by, and the train itself was even worse: he watched the sun rise higher overhead and then sink again, a strange excitement in his heart and a longing as bright as flickering birdsong calling him on. He didn’t dare watch the coast as the taxi drew closer, the clouds a little heavier overhead than they had been that morning, in the south, but instead stared into his lap, and ignored the attempts of the driver to start conversation until they were pulling up at the docks. He glanced down at his watch as paid the driver, trying to remember the times of the spring tides.

The air was a little colder up here, he realised as he stepped out of the taxi cab, and he sniffed, patting at his coat pocket before frowning. Damn.

He’d forgotten his handkerchief.

The signs were up already for the opening tomorrow, pointing visitors in the direction of parking and to the local pub for food; bright bunting decorated the docks, and it was only then that he allowed himself to look up at the Lonely Rock. The windows of the house caught the setting sun and looked to be on fire for a moment, but the thought did not fill him with dread or fear: instead some curling exhilaration tightened in his chest, and he slung his bag over his shoulder.

The breeze caught the curls of his hair, and he took one hesitant step towards the causeway.

The island looked beautiful, he realised now, in the sunlight; warm and welcoming.

Oddly comforting, he remembered thinking, when he was inside Erebor House; despite the chill of the dead, it had felt like home.

“Bilbo?”

He turned at the familiar voice, and the setting sunlight was bright against his face, blinding him for a moment in the golden light; he raised a hand to his face to protect his eyes, but he was already smiling.

“You came back.”

“I’ve never missed an opening,” Bilbo replied, quietly, and Thorin huffed a short, laugh.

“Are you here to stay?”

The sun was still too bright for Bilbo to see much more than Thorin’s outline, but he thought that the other man might have been smiling. He shrugged, an easy gesture, as the sun began to dip below the horizon.

“Perhaps,” he answered, as Thorin took a step closer. “I thought that if you were brave enough to come back, then so was I.”

The sun disappeared just in time to catch a strange and fleeting expression across Thorin’s face, somewhere between hope and sorrow, and Bilbo had to stop himself from reaching out to touch his cheek.

“I did not mean to come back,” Thorin replied, his voice low and soft. “I meant to leave and never think of the Rock again. But…”

“It called to you,” Bilbo finished, and Thorin nodded.

“I heard the winging of the seabirds in my dreams still,” he said. “And the distant sound of the waves. This is where I belong. And it feels peaceful now, it truly does. The wind is quiet at night, and the sea is calmer in the spring.” He looked at Bilbo, and his mouth truly did begin to curl into a smile then, making something hot and bright flicker in Bilbo’s chest. “Though I still do not think I will live here in the winter.”

Bilbo smiled, and moved a little closer; Thorin’s hand, when it touched his wrist, was warm.

“Have you been well?” Thorin asked, his voice even quieter than before, and Bilbo nodded. He could have asked why Thorin had not called him, but he thought that he understood Thorin’s reasons as well as he could understand his own.

“The boys? And Dis?”

“Better,” Thorin answered, and then his fingers were tracing Bilbo’s cheekbone, tentative and a little uncertain. Bilbo leant into the touch, and for the first time, Thorin’s skin was warm against his own.

“Good,” he replied, and he meant it.

The sun continued to set over the still and quiet island; in the distance came the sound of the sea, calm and still in the spring evening. There was the hint of warmth on the breeze, the promise of a summer to come, of a sun that would continue to rise again, ever brighter, ever warmer. Bilbo smiled as Thorin’s hand cupped his jaw, lifting his face to his.

“I never had time to thank you,” Thorin whispered. “Not properly.”

“Thank me later,” Bilbo answered, and pressed a light, gentle kiss to Thorin’s mouth. “We have plenty of time.”

 

* * *

 

_Love is most nearly itself  
When here and now cease to matter._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for sticking with me on this! 
> 
> The lines of poetry at the end of each chapter all come from T. S. Eliot's [Four Quartets](http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/), which are a beautiful set of poems and are well worth a read.


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